Bittersweet Infamy - #82 - Get the Hell Out

Episode Date: October 8, 2023

Halloween special! Josie tells Taylor about three infamous exorcisms, including a convent of hell-raising nuns in 17th century France, a passel of seemingly possessed Pueblo women in the Spanish colony of New Mexico, and the mid-century possession that inspired the classic horror flick The Exorcist. Plus: unearthing the shadowy secret behind Powers of Darkness, the Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Music Welcome to Bittersweetim. I'm Taylor Vaso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast we share the stories that live on and in the... The strange and the familiar? The tragic and the comic? The bitter and the sweet. Can't believe that they opened the corn mace so late it's so dark out here. Uh yeah I have something to tell you Taylor. It wasn't open. I snuck us in the bull cutters are in my bag. That's why we had to cut down all that corn.

Yeah. It's like since now. So wait, that's not that can't possibly be right because on the way in that uh that old woman with the toothless grin, back into me in. What old woman with the toothless grin, back into me in. What old woman with a toothless grin? Yes! Yes! Welcome everybody to trick or treat in for me. It is October. You are eating your whole pumpkin.

Like it is a taco just bite by bite crumbling messy messy word inside all through your fingers but you don't care because it's pumpkin puse day baby Josie how you been how you do and we're not actually in a corn maze that was just just a little, uh, that was a little, a trick if you like, have you been to a corn maze recently? And within the past four years, let's say I've been to a corn maze. It was, it was pretty chill except for like someone at the very beginning was like, you know, the secret to these is if you just hang along the left wall, it'll take you a while, but you'll always get out. Because that's just how me's are.

It's not very spooky or fun or like. The ones that I like and the one that I went to most recently is the type that has a certain trivia question, and it can either be general knowledge trivia or it'll be like you're given some sort of lore on the way and that's what I like, because I think that's a bit more fun. I went to one a year ago and the trivia had to do with the family who owned the farm and ran the corn maze.

That is? Like, damn it. Are they, like, wait, wait, wait, five questions. Them, like, the generations of their ancestors that own this are like literally like, Kathy who you can kind of see over there if you part the corn. Yeah, it was like, where does Kathy and her family go on their suburbicates? Fuck yes, go Kathy, go Kathy, that is the perfect way. That is like the ultimate narcissism in pieces. A corn maze, a bunch of questions about you, and if you pull it up on a drone shot,

it looks like you given a big thumbs up. That is the dream. I had an encounter with a little cat today. I was walking down the street and I was very in my own head as I often am and I hear it's literally I'm in this cat's way I'm taking up too much of the sidewalk and it's a little bit annoyed but it does want to rub up against me and get snuggles but then leave me alone and it was such the perfect thing to bring me out of my mind in that moment. I really, really enjoyed it. Aw, was it like, take me home?

It very evidently had a home. It had a little pink collar, which means girl. And, uh, yeah, but very, very cute. And I will say, I find often that when cats do that, they'll play a little bit hot and call a little bit coy. I think that cat genuinely just wanted me to move out of the way. I wanted a little love on the way by, and then just kind of wanted to go off and do it something, which I was totally into, but it was like the little chirping meow specifically really did it for me in terms of a thing to like snap you out of the fugue and just kind of make you pay attention to the world around you.

Really enjoyed it. I still think you need a cat. Fuck your landlord. Just get a cat. I do need a cat. Someone said that. Emotional support animal cat. Speaking of speaking of being in your own head, I recently went to something called a death cafe. Yeah, I want to hear more about this. Okay, so this was offered by my local, it's like called Health Initiative for Madness, like a gay men's health thing. But it's also, like I think there's a nonprofit organization

called Death Cafe that maybe like puts these on in partnership with other groups. I don't know the exact details, so like don't go by me, but there is a, if you search Death Cafe, I saw there's like a big map of like ones that they've done and ones that they're gonna do. And it's literally just like

You go into a chill room There's snacks. There's brownies. There. I mean, I can't promise that there's gonna be brownies The point of this death cafe is you literally go in there and it's facilitated by people who are like in my case it was like yeah a social worker and somebody who was called a death doula which is like bringing you safely to the other side and you literally just talk about your own thoughts on death mortality whatever's on your heart suicide whatever it is it was quite nice oh they also have little cards that you can pick up and talk about death to each other it was quite nice actually yeah like little prompt cards but I other. It was quite nice. I actually...

Oh my gosh. Like some prompt cards? Yeah, like little prompt cards, but I didn't like the prompts. The prompts I actually found like some of them were like too big for me to consider in that moment, but they're like, if you don't like the prompt you got, you just put it back, you pick up another one, or you don't use the prompts. Yeah. I found that the people there were very willing to meet me where I was on the subject, and I was very willing to meet them where they were on the subject, and the what people had on the subject ranged from like,

legitimately like horror to fascination to delight. Wow. Wow. Yeah, it was useful for me. Is it continuous? Or is it kind of a one-time? I would, I, if they did another one, I would go to it again. That's really cool. Yeah, it was cool. I bring that in the spirit of spooky season But also a knowledge that we contemplate big thoughts sometimes and I think in Western society and specific

We're not really always encouraged to meet those thoughts or to feel comfortable expressing those thoughts, right? Right and that's pretty spooky. Yeah, yeah And you know like spooky season is a ritualized time a valve. It's a release for that energy It is yeah, but it has also gotten like you know No, it's about the like tiny fun-sized snickers. It's not a bad part I love that part too bad part is good too. No, but that part's good too. You know, you know, it has me cope with death a kick hat, man Like truly truly no, and totally and it's like not a coincidence that this is the time when we move from harvest to barren field. It's the time of, yeah, it's the time of all halos, even just like, there's this idea that the

veil between worlds is thinner. I don't know, it's a really, really interesting time of year for sure. And I love that it comes with these little spooky pumpkins and these little spooky black hats. So that's my preferred flavor of Halloween is actually like a cute little witch and cute little pumpkin. Like I'm very, I'm very, like little stuffed spider and you flip the thing and it goes,

woo, it makes a noise. Would you like a minifamous? I would. I thought you were going to say like a minifamous? I would. I thought you were gonna say a mint, like part of Halloween candy. I'm like, yeah. I'm like, I just, I just, my Halloween candy.

Yeah, that was. I am wearing my, I am wearing my count chocular shirt today. Oh, that's so cute. Good choice. I've heard this forever. Dude, you know what's so funny about this shirt? It's a really nice comfy shirt.

I've had it forever. It used to fit me so loose that I didn't like to wear it because it just kind of hung up me. But I've since filled out my frame and it now fits nicely well. Yeah, babe. I like that dark brown too. My titties came in, you know?

We all reach that age. Yeah, yeah, they little budding mounds, that mounds shit. When I found out, y'all call them mounds at first Who says that? And that's like a puberty term. That's not me. That's not me, baby. That's puberty Like the mount Yo, I am not making this up. They might have changed it, but back in back in my day back in my day. We called it the mound, okay

Speaking of mounds are going to the Memphis. Okay. Okay. So Josie Taylor consider if you will okay Bram Stoker's iconic 1897 epistolary novel Dracula Uh-huh. Yes, if your heart tense step in terror Just now it may be because the last time I mentioned Dracula and the podcast ended up talking about porn for two hours. But worry not my friends. Not again. Nope, nope, nope. We've learned our lesson.

My interest this time are truly literally. I love that story. I really like to too, but I like it now. I didn't like it at the time. It's taken me some living with that part of my history to learn to love it. Anyway, my interest this time are purely literary. After all, Dracula is thrilling narrative in its cast of memorable characters, protagonist Jonathan Harker and his wife Mina, vampire hunter Van Helsing,

a silo-man administrator, Dr. Seward and his eccentric patient, Renfield, and of course, Wacky Dracky himself remain the primary basis for our understanding of vampires and fiction. To the point where I'm wearing a cat chocula shirt right now, we eat breakfast cereal about this guy. Yeah, yeah, there's a character on Sesame Street. There's a character in porn. It goes deep.

It goes deep, dudes. It goes too deep, somewhat argue. And given Dracula's wide scope of influence, it should come as no surprise that the novel has been a popular subject for serialization, adaptation, and foreign language translation ever since its first publication. I didn't even try to rhyme, but it did. Hey, babe. The best ones.

What's your, have you ever read this book, Dracula? I have not, no. But I'm a really big fan of what we do in the shadows. Sure, yeah. No, exactly. I love a campy interpretation of Dracula. I was actually kind of scared of Dracula dead and loving it, starring Leslie Nielsen as a child.

Those are the worst ones. The ones that aren't meant to be scary, like Ernest scared stupid. I still don't watch that. I find it too upsetting. You get scared stupid. Do you know how stupid I meant to be scary like Ernest scared stupid I still don't watch that I find it too upsetting you get scared stupid Do you know how stupid I got to be scared to voluntarily miss an replicate performance? It's devastating. Oh It's an epistolary novel it's written in the form of letters and it's about the sky Jonathan Harker who goes out to visit count Dracula and

in Transylvania I believe and All of these kind of strange occurrences. He's got these beautiful women who hang around the castle and he's Jonathan Harcours told by his host, so you mustn't go out into the castle at night, so naturally he does. Yeah. And all of these things go on, and then later on, the second half of the novel Dracula comes to England, and we're hunting him down, and all of these things. This is, it's a good book. It's a good royalty free book. I don't know if it was on Phoebe Reads and Mystery, which is the host of criminals side podcasts, where she just reads

a mystery and her wonderful speaking voice to you. Or it might have been on archive.org, but I definitely, I've listened to the first half of Dracula somewhat recently as an audiobook while going to sleep. It's a good book to go to sleep too, if you don't mind something a little spooky. Oh cool. But yeah, specifically today, I am interested in the Icelandic version of Dracula. Ooh, okay, okay. Which was first published in 1901, three years after the English original. Okay. Known as Mached Mirkana, or Powers of Darkness, the Icelandic version holds a formative

place in its own country's literary canon, originally published in a serialized form in the Reykjavik newsletter Fjell Konen, and translated by Waldemar Asminson, the paper's editor, Powers of Darkness was bought for many years to be a simplified condensed version of the original. Okay. Imagine everyone's surprise in 1986 when an English scholar named Richard Dalby discovered that the Icelandic version had a written introduction from Bram Stoker himself

that was missing from every other translated version of the tale and the English original. Whoa! Oh my gosh! Massive discovery and something that had been hiding and seeming plain sight for such a long time. Yeah. Just nobody had kind of been able, had had the right combination of skills, expertise and interest to put it together.

Right, yeah. Bjork was like, I didn't know. I just thought I was there. I wasn't born yet. I hadn't come out of the volcano. Yeah. But you said the translation was rediscovered in 86, 19? Rediscovered. Like it was the same translation that had been there the whole time.

It was just that for the first time an English speaker who evidently spoke some measure of Icelandic looked at it and was like, this has a prefix from Bram Stoker that I've never seen in any other version. Oh, I see we're saying this guy's skill set. Okay, I guess we're saying. Yeah. Here's an abridged version of this preface. In English. I don't know, I said, well, I know some. I know Mee the Vikudags is Wednesday. That's a Bjork song. So this is a Bram Stoker London August 1898. The reader of this story will very soon understand how the events outlined in these pages have been gradually drawn together to make a logical whole. Apart from exercising minor details which I consider unnecessary, I have let the people involved relate their experiences in their own way, but for obvious reasons I have changed

the names of the people in places concerned. In all other respect, I leave the manuscript unaltered in deference to the wishes of those who consider it their duty to present it before the eyes of the public. I am quite convinced that there is no doubt whatever that the events described really took place, however unbelievable and incomprehensible they might appear at first sight. All the people who have willingly or unwillingly played a part in this remarkable story are known generally and are well respected. Book Jonathan Harker and his wife, who is a woman of character and doctor Seward, are my friends and have been for many years, and I have never doubted

that they were telling the truth. And the highly respected scientist who appears here under pseudonym will also be famous all over the educated world for his real name, which I have not desired to specify to be hidden from people. But in our times, it ought to be clear to all serious thinking men that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy. And that part, more things on heaven and earth,

that's a quote from Hamlet. Ah, layers. So what did you hear in that? Based on true events. Yeah, it's a pretty singular thing because the other versions of Dracula for them to not have that unusual, this is a true story.

It happened to a friend of a friend of mine, Blair Witch, found footage beginning. I was gonna say Blair Witch, yeah. Here at Blair Witch, right? Like this really happened. It makes it spooky or for sure. For sure, especially I feel like at that time where like we're a hundred years Pre-blare which literally a hundred years pre-blare which almost exactly are our literacy around those types of things is not the same and even then

Exactly people really bought into it, right? Yeah, if it was committed to print then it might as well be exactly truth It's also interesting that this appears exclusively in the Icelandic translation rather than in its author's original tongue. Yeah. Well, there is long whispered hearsay that Stoker, Bram Stoker, the author of the original, originally created a much longer version that his Boston editor had him trim down, creating a plausible explanation for both this intro, as well as the occasional minor discrepancy

between the scenes in the English and Icelandic texts. Thus scholars of the 1980s theorized that the Icelandic version, far from being just another translation, was likely the first ever that Stoker authorized and that Stoker must have collaborated directly with Voldemort Asminson and given him privileged access to early drafts of the work. Voldemort. Don't shh really? I haven't read Harry Potter, but I know that joke.

Love me, Harry Potter people. I'm sorry I yelled at you for being Hufflepuffs many times and still doing my head. So this theory that Voldemort had, asmonson, had a personal acquaintance with Stoker and that he was working off a different draft than eventually ended up being published in English and most of its subsequent translations. This was the common wisdom until 2014 when Dutch scholar Hans Cornel de Rues in his curiosity crowdsourced a team of Icelandic readers to help him translate and edit the text to powers

of darkness. He Compared it to Dracula and he said wait a minute. These are completely different books. Whoa, but with brand stokers name on it. Yeah, what? Iceland isn't like that And there have to be some of them who speak English at least thousands Yes thousands. Yes. What is it not? So before we get into that, let me tell you about the differences between these two texts. Okay. Okay. Oh yes, yes, yes, yeah. Yeah, what's the proof here? Powers of Darkness has entirely new characters. Like a Sherlock Holmes knock off named Inspector

Barrington Jones. And important characters from the original, like the fly eating Renfield, are missing altogether. Jonathan Harker, whose first name is Thomas, in powers of darkness, finds himself in new terrifying scenarios not found in the original, like watching the count perform a human sacrifice. Harker is also a titty man, making frequent remarks upon the breasts of female characters not found in the better known version of the tale. Oh my gosh. Perhaps the mountains, the mountains, the mountains and the mountains, baby. He's a mountain man.

He's a mound hound. There we go. It's Taylor's Halloween costume. Mountain town. Go! That's Taylor's Halloween costume. Mountain Towers. Oh, no. Oh.

Oh. And perhaps most notably, Dracula's got connects in this version. He is deeply in mesh in a cabal of global leaders and a strong proponent of ruthless Nichean survival of the fittest philosophy in keeping with the turn of the century move toward fascism. You might remember our German friends from the Galapagos affair, also very intonici, as was the style of time. For his part, Dutch scholar Ruz happens to think that powers of darkness is the better book.

Although I'm sure he would, it's probably such a deer text to him considering he broke this massive story. Yeah. Quote, although Dracula received positive reviews in most newspapers of the day, the original novel can be tedious in meandering. Powers of Darkness by contrast is written in a concise, punchy style, each seen as to the progress of the plot. Hmm.

Well, naturally, theories bound. Was Asmond Sin working off an original draft? Did he have a special link to Bram Stoker himself and work in partnership with the author to refine the script? Did he take- Or was it just a rogue translation? There you go. Was he just like, let's make this better, bitch. Who cares about translation ethics? Woop, woop, woop. Then how does Bram Stoker's name on it? Because it was more popular. So you think it- so as yours, your guess is just a lie. yeah. Fair enough, did he take substantial liberties with the translation, if so, why did Stoker authorize him? Is it just a lie?

As Josie suggests, is it just a big, Shenandigas, as we say, in Iceland? Yeah. The plot thickens with the introduction of another scholar, a sweet, named Rickard Berghorn, who realizes amidst the discussion that powers of darkness, the Icelandicic version has the same name and many other commonalities with a Swedish version of Dracula that had been serialized in 1899

in between the releases of the Stoker version and Asminson's supposed translation. Gord! Says Hans Cornel Derruse who made the original discovery about the Icelandic text. Quoted and slightly abridged. No one saw it coming. Neither my research colleagues nor my publisher nor my friend Simone Bernie from Italy who is a specialist for the early translations of Dracula. For more than 100 years, Mock Demirkana, the Icelandic adaptation of Dracula, has not been

no note-side of Iceland except for the preface apparently authored by Bram Stoker himself. Evidently, those in Iceland who were familiar with Voldemort Asmond since modifications did not recognize their significance for Dracula's studies. That's capitalized, this is a field good. In the UK or in the US, and the other way around, English-speaking researchers never cared to try and read the Icelandic text. I had to learn Icelandic only to get the gist of the matter. Now, it turns out that

the same has been happening in Sweden. Several Swedish experts already were familiar with an early version of Dracula that has been serialized in the Swedish newspapers, Degen and Afton Bladet from June 10th, 1899 on, but no one ever paid attention to it until Rickard Berghorn read about my English translation of Machnurkana and realize that this still older Swedish version, born in identical title, Morkrat's Mockter, that is a very accurate Swedish pronunciation. As is the title of the Swedish serialization, it means exactly the same as Mock Meurkana, powers of darkness. That is how he made the link between the Swedish and the Icelandic version. Right, yeah, but like the titles were the same, so maybe these are similar. Let's look. Like, yes. Okay.

First, he assumed that Makt Mirkana would be a straight translation of the Swedish publication, but then he found out that the Swedish text is more complete and contains scenes neither described in Dracula nor in Makt Mirkana and that the Mad Men Ren field is still in the story among others. What? So we have a third version now of Dracula with Bram Stoker's name on it. With his name on it, yeah. Yes. What?

So, what do we know about Morcrets Mockther the Swedish Dracula? Okay. Two versions of it were published. The first serialized in the paper, Dagen in June 1899, ran over 300,000 words long, more than twice the length of the original. Holy fuck. Whoa. A second shorter version was published, starting in August 1899, and the twice-weekly Aftumb Bladitz Halveko Uplaga, and that's Dagen's sister tabloid paper. Okay. Both versions were credited to bram stoker along with an anonymous translator A-E

and that's written A-M-Dash-E. Okay. Further bolstering the connection between the Swedish and Icelandic versions is that the supposed stoker preface appears in a shortened form in the Swedish powers of darkness. Hmm. Hmm. There are other market differences. Swedish Dracula is actually named Draculitz. Naturally.

The party loving leader of a cult of apes and his position within this international cabal of world leaders is further spotlighted in a parody of the theosophic rituals, fascism, social Darwinism, and anti-Semitism of the era. Okay. Sadly, no Arthur Conan Doyle appearance in this one. Once theosophy, and I was really looking out for him, but he didn't seem to weigh in on this one that I saw.

No. Must not know Icelandic. Right. Due to its much longer word count, the first Swedish version is considered more complete, although it apparently wraps up very quickly at the end. It's author perhaps having grown tired of the lengthy serialization process. Okay, been there. The Icelandic version of Powers of Darkness by Voldemort Asminson seems to be an adaptation

of the Swedish one, for which no English original has ever been found. So who's the Sweden going out there right in this bad boy? Additionally, you remember that hamlet quote that I took care to point out to you from the Brahms Stoker intro? Yeah. Modern scholars have deduced that that component was likely plagiarized from the memoir of a Lutheran pastor Bernhard Vodström, which was published exclusively in Swedish, exclusively in Sweden. How did English writer Brahms Stoker know about this obscure Swedish language memoir, and why would he plagiarize from it? He probably didn't. That likely falls to A.E. the evident author of Powers of Darkness Swedish Victims Unit. Their identity remains a mystery but as of

now there is no evidence that A.E. had any connection to Bram Stoker or even that stoker knew that these narratives were published in his name. This is like some slum dog millionaire shit. Okay. You might remember that way back in this ex-cola episode, I told you that the widow Stoker was very litigious and that she got a particular movie. Oh, that's right. Hold off the shelves because she felt that it infringed upon the Dracula copyright and accord agreed with her.

Yeah. These have never been similarly seized. It seems likely that the Stokers have no idea that they even exist or that Bram Stoker's name has been put to them. Yeah, because the Stokers don't speak Icelandic nor Swedish, okay. Exactly.

So it's fan art. It's fan fiction, it's unauthorized fan fiction. That's what Stoker biographer David Skull dubbed it in 2016. The other way that you could put it is that this was a literary forgery that took over a hundred years to discover hiding in play and sight. Whoa. That's all those places are close. Like Iceland and Sweden are not far. Like how? mocked me or kind of the Icelandic version has been very enduring but this particular Swedish version I think it was published in these two newspapers right around the time that the original like a year or two after the original English language version of

Dracula came out they were republished in another Swedish magazine and I want to say like the 1910s I think it was called like tipsy tops your topsy turvy and I don't name like that they republished it there. But then this particular serialized Swedish version of Dracula was kind of lost to the sands of time. Whereas the Icelandic one, which is kind of the Swedish one, is in the is the bridge between the English one and the Icelandic one, that one's gone missing, but mocked me or kind of has just been out there for anyone who knew both Icelandic and English to compare for a long time

and it just happened to take this long for anybody to do it and also I guess apply a scholarly eye to it or publicize it or whatever it was Huns Cornel Derrue's published his English translation of mocked Mierkana the Icelandic version under the title Powers of Darkness the Icelandic version under the title, Powers of Darkness. The lost version of Dracula in 2017, he was given a Lord Ruth Vin Award denoting excellence in the field of vampire literature. My ambition is to get one of these. I think you can make it happen. I can snag a Lord Ruth Vin of I apply myself.

In 2022, the Swedish fake Dracula, Mortgretz Mockdor, received two new translations to English, interests his only increased around both Scandinavian versions, with scholars furiously staking out, hehehe, new discoveries. And as for Dracula himself, he's right behind you! That's cool. She didn't turn because she's confident and she can probably see the zoom window too. But you know what vampires don't show up on zoom bits? Oh shit. That's so true. Isn't that a trip? The vampires don't show up on zoom or the whole story.

No, no, the Icelandic show. That's wild. Yeah. Are you gonna read the Swedish version and the Icelandic version now? I'll listen to audiobook versions of them while I go to sleep. There you go. Actually, I've had to listen to an audiobook in another language. It's like a very sleepy baby chickie naggy. Sure. Yep. I agree. Last episode we told you a little bit, I should say Josie told you a little bit via the minfamous about Cassandra, the exotic, the famed, exotic

wrestler, Mexican Lucia Libre. And we alluded that very shortly we would be releasing a coffee, KO-Hi-F-N-F-I-DOT-COM slash bitter sweet infamy exclusive where paid subscribers can listen to us chat shit about this film. We've decided that for spooky month we're going to be tipping into October so we decided that we want to make that a double feature and we're gonna add in an El Santo movie and if you listen to our last episode you'll remember that El Santo was a very famous Mexican lucha door who ended up doing a series of horror movies to the delight of everyone and these are actually all available for free on 2BTV. We've chat I've made very obtuse

references to having watched one the Aztec Mummy one. We're gonna find a fun one and we're gonna do that as a lucha-libe-de-double bill and we're hoping that after that that we can do like a monthly movie but you have to be a monthly subscriber to our coffee to listen to it. So if you've ever considered giving to us and you've been like, oh I should give them 20 bucks. Fun Fun fact if you were to give us like two dollars a month. Yeah for a whole year monthly That would be $24 you could give us a dollar a month even and it would be $12 and you would save eight dollars in that arrangement It's true. And you just set it up with your credit or debit or whatever you need and And it just goes, bloop, bloop, bloop.

I don't know if you've noticed, but Jonathan Mountain's been our monthly subscriber. We've been thanking him. That could be you. Thanks, Jonathan. That could be you that we thank. Coffee.com, ko-hyphen.com slash bittersweet infamy. We're gonna be talking about Lucha and probably another movie

per month going forward unless this doesn't work. And then we'll probably abandon it. And you'll never hear about it again, but we think we're open. Um, okay. Give me your story. Give me your spooky story. I want to be scared down into my- I want my skeleton to shriek out of my mouth and run around dancing and then jump back in. Ooh! Like an early animation thing? Yeah, very that. Very that. Black and white please.

Yeah. It's a good thing I had split pea soup for dinner. And, uh, I'm feeling the power of Christ compelling me. Uh, oh god. I'm gonna stretch out some of these neck muscles because, oh, yeah. Yeah, so you get some mobility in there, I feel that. Yeah, because they're gonna be, this head's gonna be spin-in tonight. I wish it. Taylor.

How's your crab walk in stills? I have been working on them, stretching, keeping them work. Okay, okay, okay. Sure, sure. I'm telling you the story of three, not one, not two, but three. Cheekies.

Bone chilling tails of exorcism. We've got nuns crawling up walls. We've got indigenous mothers in colonial New Mexico, coffin-up horse teeth, and we have a NASA engineer, shaking beds, and baby Jesus portraits in the Midwest America in 1949. Wow, okay, so as they say in those insufferable babo memes that I can't fucking stand, you've done me a heckin' surprise here.

Because I didn't know that you were actually talking about real life exercises. Oh, over you, were you like coming through? I was like, this is the story of the fucking Limp Layers, the exercise. Which I was more than down for. That sounds like a fucking trip. and Lynn Blair is the extra-sus-sus-sus-sus-sus-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s- Let's just get the devil on out of there. I will say Linda Blair and that exorcism, we will come back to that. How can you not? Okay, because when you said three exorcisms, I was like, it had sequels, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, totally. I love that you were going to be doing the sequels as well.

No, fun, that was a very interesting movie I think that probably has colored a lot of our cultural conversation around exorcism. Yeah, totally. Yeah, when I say exorcism, like what comes to your mind? Like how do you? How do you come to exorcism? Chicky to say so I wouldn't say I'm not I didn't grow up religious my grandmother certainly was very Catholic and a grandmother Laura's. But she was the only one. I would say, but like my I know that various of my other grandparents ran the range from like believing in God but not going to church to atheist. My parents never really forced us into church and so like the ideas of I guess demons being present Isn't really something that I worry all that much about. Yeah, but I'm also not I don't know

I'm open to other people's interpretations of open to other people's spirituality My worry is often that things that seem to be demonic possession are just like mental illness expressing itself Yes, yeah. Or your gay or these sorts of things. Yes, all different, yeah. But I'm not, listen, I'm sure you're a boat to turn me right around on the subject, right? Well, maybe not.

I do think of it as something that gets a lot of play in movies and in narratives meant to inspire a religious sort of fear. Right. I feel that you can tell who grew up religious versus who didn't based on the types of horror movies that they're willing to endure. Oh.

I personally find horror movies about people who are simply evil and immoral and start to kill. Yeah. I find that very disconcerting because that is something within the realm of plausibility for me. Yeah. All the Catholics, all the Jehovah's Witnesses, all the Dada-Dada-Dada, all the Dada-Dada.

You ask them, what kind of horror movies won't you watch? I don't like the shit about demons because that can really happen. Yeah, yeah. So I feel like it kind of informs how you come to appropriately enough since we're talking about the exorcism, right? I feel like it kind of informs the lens that you bring to horror, but it goes

much deeper than that. It's also like world view shit, but that's the lens that I, a filthy non-believer, um, process it through. Beautiful filthy non-believer. Excuse me. Thank you. Well, I mean, like going back to square one and exorcism is a practice and evocation. Usually it's an involved ritual where malignant spirits or demons who have possessed a person who have entered the body of a person. They are exercised out. They are victed from that vehicle of that person. Right. And my interpretation, like my knee-jerk reaction to it, it definitely

follows the exorcist movie, Linda Blair, Barf and Eps, Blit P Soup. Right. Or modern counterparts, the exorcism of Emily Rose, just like another, like I feel like every every 10 or 20 years you get a new exorcism movie right we got a fresh one this year do we 20 23s the Pope's exorcist star ring Russell Crowe the Pope's exorcist he must be a very good exorcist yeah he's like up there he's the Olivia Pope of exorcist we call him into fix the the shit that we don't know how to fix. Yeah, it's great Yeah, exorcisms. I think they're really fascinating because they do call on this question of good and evil and like how you define good and how you define Evil are very much based in the culture that you are exposed to the air and which you live

You know like you just said like maybe that demon quote unquote is queerness or being a woman in the patriarchy. Or you want to have sex. Yeah, maybe you're just depressed. It's a valuable thing, a definition of evil. Right. And so what is being expelled? What is needing to be cleansed from somebody is definitely dependent on a culture and a way of viewing good and evil. And it's present in all types of

cultures across the world. I most associate exorcisms with Catholicism and the early Christian church. And I think a big part of that is as Christianity started spreading and it was hitting up against pagan beliefs, it was very easy to distinguish Christianity from paganism by saying, well, Christianity is the good thing and paganism is evil and needs to be removed, cleansed. You need to be purified of that malignant source. The more I learn about Christianity, the less impressed I am about its kindness.

In this context too, I'm talking about the history of Christianity as an organized religion, rather than any particular practitioner who may be listening and enjoys their faith. Uh, yep, feel the same, feel the same. The idea of good and evil and exorcisms being tied to that was definitely a tool of the early Christian Church to distinguish itself. Right. Now, in 1614, there was... Jesus. I know. Too soon, too soon.

Too soon. We jump a bit here, yeah. Yeah. A text was written out of the Catholic Church called rituale romanum, the Latin name for Roman ritual. And within that text is a supplemental element called of exorcisms and certain supplications. So it's essentially the rule book,

it's the prayer book for exorcism. Gotcha. Gotcha. So if you need to, if you have any exorcism, questions your manager can be like read the manual. And it has been relevant since its inception in 1614. It has been used and deployed. The last updated version of this Rikshuale Romanum was published in 1999. Oh wow, Blair Witch. Yeah, Blair Witch, if you will. In 1634, there was a French counselor Moncier de Na'u, and he writes a book called The History of the Devils of Ludon. It's kind of a treatise on exorcism. And he writes, there are four principal signs of an exorcism.

As do you think, are they four things that I could have reasoned with you? I think so. I think you could. Yeah. You've seen the movie. I haven't. I'm gonna go, well, I know of it.

The movie's seen you. I should watch it. The movie's seen. Right. I'm gonna go with like abusive or hostile temperament. I'm gonna go with like blasphemy. It's gotta be in there. Okay, okay. Yeah. I'm gonna go with...

Oh fuck, this is hard. Disobedience. Not my best work, okay. And I'm gonna go with... Let's just go with any sort of physical calamity ailment, sweat and pissing. Okay, yeah, interesting. Sweating and pissing everywhere. I mean, I did that today, but who knows?

Who among us? It's a day for expectation. It's the spooky season. It's true, it's true. According to this French counselor, there are four principal signs by which possession can be undoubtedly recognized. See, I'm already out, but go ahead. The speaking or understanding of a language unknown to the person possessed. Demon tongue, you have to be a thing.

Well done. Thank you. The revelation of the future or of events happening far away. Species, but okay. I'll include in that, because I think this falls under the same purview. The possessed person has knowledge that they wouldn't know otherwise. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, because it's a different person, right? It's a different entity. So it's like, Oh, yeah, but, but, but, but, but I can be like, I'm baffled, man. The world is square. What is that?

I don't know. No, no, it's like Taylor, your mother. That bitch is on her period. Yeah, like that. Yeah. Got you, got you. Okay, number three. Okay, okay.

The exhibition of strength beyond the years and nature of the actor. Speciescies next. Uh, number four, just a casual floating in the air for a few moments. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. See, one of those, one of those is a bit tricky. Uh, this floating in the air shit, I don't have a tidy remedy for it. Yeah, yeah, it's just a floating fur bit.

Yeah, yeah. But like, why do demons want a float for a bit and only a bit? I, yeah. It's their nature, they're like the scorpion, it's their nature, okay. Yeah, yeah. But I do think what you surmise does kind of fault, because I think that idea of- Minor better, minor much better. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you've had 400 years on the guy give me a break that's true I've had 4,000 years I love this Taylor demon you can hang around anytime he sees a who you love smile show man that's how you can tell if I'm demon Taylor or not a regular Taylor does not know how to play Maw's young demon Taylor Crash is a lot of complicated that is that is telltale side for demon Taylor not for demon Taylor The first thing that fell out of my mouth She come up with my show. That was the first thing that fell out of my mouth. I'm doing it.

I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. There's some accounts where bloody writing will appear on the possessed body or pastures or sores. Sometimes those pastures sores, like they spell something, you know, their name. It's weird. No, it spells something. Yeah, help me.

I'm in there, but I'm expressing myself through pastules. I prefer writing and drawing. Well, I mean, everybody has their art form that they need to express themselves with. Yeah, I should, I should, I should in kinkshaven. Yeah. In one particular incident in the Philippines in 1955, a possessed girl by the name of Clarita Villanueva. She was covered, her body was covered in perfectly circular bite marks, every single tooth, a molar. That's ornate. I've got to be impressed by the high level tricks that this demon is doing. I know, right? I think also in that physicality category,

there's an avoidance of any type of sacred object. So crucifixes, holy water, portraits of baby J. You know, that's such. I can't say anything, because I love my grandma to be very Catholic. So this first story of possession and exorcism, we are going back to 1634. We are in a small town in France, Loup-Dun, and we are within the walls of the Ursuline And this is probably the most infamous case of early modern mass possession. Mass possession, they do it in bulk now?

Yeah, yeah. 1634 were about two years after the outbreak of that plague. The political social, a people of a plague, we know it well. It's happening at this time as well. There's also in this era of France, a very big coming to a head between the Catholic monarch, Louis XIII, with his Cardinal Richelieu, Homeboy, and his side. They're up against the Protestants of France, otherwise known as the Huguenots. Still! Still! Still the fucking Catholics in the pro- Okay, listen Catholics, I'm not meaning to be disrespectful to the Catholics or the Protestants.

Y'all need to get your shit together. It's true. This is, this is excessive. Yeah. In the realms of things, you're still both Christians. Let's pull it together. That's now the listen and the lma, and they'll finish it. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, world peace right there. Now that I've finally weighed in on the subject, you're welcome. Yeah, I still got time on the clock. I can give more in my answer if you want. The judges haven't cut me off yet.

I'm cutting off. Boom. And very... The judges have cut me off. Hahaha. Very contentious time, religiously, socially, politically, Louis XIII's power, and he issues an edict to the town of Ludon to tear down the wall that encircles this meeting wall. Mr. Bournemitch have tear down that wall. Yes, we got it.

What he's really trying to do is just incorporate that town under his own monarchy and without a defense then they don't have that. The Protestants, the Huguenots, not so down with that, they want to have some protection. The Huguenot down with it. Within the Convent itself, there is of course women can't be trusted to run the whole thing. So there is a father who is considered the Convent's confessor, so he's like in charge of it, but it doesn't live there. I want to kick him in the mouth. Well, get possessed and then you can, right? I'm going to skip that step.

Well, this guy is already dead when we hit him in this story. So he has died and they're looking for a new dude to take on the role of the conference confessor and slotted to take his place is a young cad, a liberty priest by the name of Urban Grandier. And he declines the rule. He's like, no, I'm not gonna do that. I've got women to sleep with. I've got Cardinal Richelot to piss off. It's not gonna happen. The is overseen by Pryoress Jean D'Agnis.

Jean D'Agnis! Yeah. Uh-huh. That's deep enough to it. Back in the day. Authentic friends translations here, beat their sweet and family. She's in charge of 17 nuns who they average at the age of 25. So this is just a convent of bays.

Young nuns. Obviously. Youngs. Young has a dream one night. A spectral image appears to her. God help us when religious people have dreams. It's rough. And she pretty much has a wet dream about her bond grandier.

Oh, that just means honey honey you just need to get laid. I'm so sorry. Yes. I love God but humans weren't meant to be celibate in that way. Unless you're asexual and then go with God as they say. But the rest of us were meant to get it wet. She states that his spectral image appeared to her, seduced her, and then took from her, quote, that which she had vowed to keep for her heavenly husband, Jesus Christ. Her pussy. Okay, penis, is that what you said? I said her pussy.

Oh, her pussy. Okay, Okay. Jean-Dagnes has a dream. Other nuns start to have dreams. We're not only urban Grandee shows up, but the old Convents confessor also shows up in their dreams. So and things started to escalate at that point. These nuns started to exhibit some characteristics that we covered a little bit earlier just now. They have knowledge of languages that they have never spoken or learned including Latin Greek and several indigenous American languages that we're certainly not known in the continent. These nuns also. Wait, wait, wait, sorry. These nuns.

These nuns. Hahaha. These nuns also exhibited feats of inhuman physicality. And we're talking like unnatural insectiles, staccato, gnarly mechanical movements. So this is also a quote from the French counselor, Montseill d'Ignat, writing about the nuns of Ludon. He says, the sisters struck their chests and backs with their heads as if they had their neck broken and with inconceivable rapidity. They twisted their arms as the joints of the shoulder,

the elbow and wrists two or three times round, lying on their stomachs, they joined their palms of their hands, the soles of their feet. What if the people who are reporting those symptoms are lying? But what a great lie. As if their neck's broken. No, I consider it broken.

No, it's a good lie Snap the back inconceivable just just like bang it out more us code on the back I'm fucking back with you And yet I would counter that other than this written account There's no evidence and that's not to say that people can't give accounts and be believed and be truthful But I want more. Well, Cardinal Richelieu didn't need much more. There was word.

They never do. The increasingly strange behavior coming out of the Convent of Lidon, the shouting, the swearing, the barking, the next snapping, the twerking probably. Like, and exorcisms were ordered. Special of the day.

Take two exorcisms, please. Pat Russell grow it there. And for me and my sis, yeah, these nuns. A month into these exorcisms. A- D's exorcisms. Apparently, according to the record, a devil declared under oath.

Wait, okay, no, don't wait. Okay, through possessed nun, you know, like scary voice can. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, blah, blah, blah. There a grandier had gained entry into the convent and into the bodies of the nuns through a bouquet of musk roses that he had left on a dormitory step. I mean, I gotta say the iconography here, just like chef's case.

No, no, no, great. That's very tattooable. A bouquet of musk roses? Yeah, it's good. Yeah, I'm the ankle baby. It's good, it's good shit. But the rest of it I'm not so sure about. I wish I were more Catholic.

I wish Granmita Loris had gotten my year more for this episode. Because I think I could have given you some good light. Well, it could happen. It could kill you. Yeah. I just don't believe I can be infested through a bouquet of musk roses. I really don't. You're not living, baby.

It's spooky season. And also, and also when the fuck am I of musk roses, I really don't. You're not living, baby. It's spooky season. And also, when the fuck am I getting musk roses? Where are my musk roses? So you're giving me musk roses? And maybe just jealous. Taylor needs his musk roses. Somebody get out there. Really?

That demon was under oath when he named Grandier. And- Why is a demon respecting the oath the demon hates God wait well it was enough to get Cardinal Richelieu's attention most likely because Grandier had offended Cardinal Richelieu by expressing public opposition to the the idea of those those town walls that I mentioned earlier. That had been a suggestion of Cardinal Richelieu's or an edict, I should say. And Grandier was like, that's stupid. Why would you do that? Don't do that.

So there's already bad blood. And Grandier has these illicit relationships in his back pocket. He's sleeping around and pregnant, lots of ladies. He's also apparently writing a book that is satirizing and attacking clerical celibacy. And he's making some enemies out there. That's what's happening. It's just people doing people things. And people things involves like, I'm pissed off that you're saying, bad shit. This is just Ramona and Luanne. Yeah.

Yeah. This is, yeah, it's Ramona and Luanne, but they're cardinals. If it is that like human bad blood, it definitely played out here because August 18th, 1634, or Bay and Grandier was found guilty of sorcery, and the dude was burned at the stake. That's too much. Wait, wait, you got burned at the stake for sorcery. Uh-huh. That's fuck, that God has nothing to do with that.

I guess Old Testament God, listen. They're next going back and forth. Just bobbing around like a fucking bird and then bobbing around like a fucking bird. These, I don't know that. It is so nuts. It is so nuts. You know the game's man.

Yeah, probably. That sounds like human shit being cloaked in the veil of the Lord to me. And it does get a little weird because the possessions did not stop and there's more exorcisms that continue well into 1638. So four years. Oh no. I know. Okay. Our gal Jean Agnes, she makes out pretty well. She becomes the mother superior of the convent. And she has, she travels the country, make he smith? Climb every mountain, bitch. She does a bit of a tour of her possession

and exorcism story, and she travels around the country. Yeah, sharing little little relics of that era and time. Let me do the exorcism rag. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, no. Okay. But English philosopher John Locke would probably agree with you. He writes in 1679, the story of the nuns of Ludon possessed

was nothing but a contrivance of Cardinal Richelieu to destroy Grandier. A man he suspected to have wrote a book against him who was condemned for witchcraft in the case and burnt for it. The scene was managed by the Capuchins and the nuns played their tricks well, but all was a cheat. That's a murder. Murder. Burn it the steak, murder, too. That's a fucking ugly murder done in the name of God if you accept that at face value,

which again is the thing that doesn't impress me. That don't impress me much. Me, my- So you burned your nemesis at the stake. Don't impress me much. Legit, legit. When I look back, call me Shane. Shave my head, I don't fucking care.

When I look back at the history of the Catholic Church, I don't impress a much. Yeah, well it's about to get a lot even more unimpressive because we're crossing the pond and we're heading over to the Americas now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you alluded to this. It's an indigenous teeth coughing possession, you know. Of course, teeth, yeah. So it was not just that the devil was pervasive in this Christian faith at this era, but as Europeans moved further west to the quote-unquote new world, they believed that this new world was in fact the devil's home. There's this idea that according to a Jesuit

Jose de Costa, he's writing in 1590 so a little bit earlier, but he's saying that once idolatry was rooted out of the best and noblest part of the world, meaning Europe, the devil retired to the most remote places, meaning the Americas, and reigned in that other part of the world, which although it is very inferior in nobility, is not so in size and breadth. If Europe is the best part of the world, then why did it take you so long to wash your hands after you took a shit? It's all I'm asking. Yelp review? Is this your...

That's one of your 16... 16 hundreds of yelp reviews. Two stars? Two stars? Really enjoyed Amsterdam. Great place. Really enjoyed it. Great trip. Dude, I don't know. It's just, I try not to be so credulous. I think I knew about this concept, but I didn't know this specific doctrine of discovery. Have you heard of this? No.

The concept is not foreign at all to an understanding of colonialism and the way that religion takes part in that. But the doctrine of discovery is an edict, a written edict, from a Christian standpoint that provided Christian explorers not only a reason, but I call to action that when they got to new lands and met people that were not Christians, they had the God-given right, nay, the God-given duty, to take over those lands and spread Christianity. Absolutely dehumanizes anybody who is not a Christian. Like I say, like the concept, not foreign to colonialism, but I think

what was surprising to me, it was like a fancy script, parchment roll. This is not just thought. This is like your job if you are a European. Your duty is to spread the word. Your duty is to be a missionary. Yeah. In this particular way. Exactly. I mean, it's really sad and disgusting, especially in the ways that we still see it in how people are treated today. It's 500 years later. How similar those threads are to what began with the doctrine of discovery from the church, too.

Look at that. So let's take a little trip to what is now modern day in New Mexico. The flat red landscape, big blue sky, hot air balloons everywhere. Jimmy McGill slipping on the floors and all that. Yep, yep, yep. It's 1764, New Mexico. It's a Spanish colony out there. The Spanish conquistadors,

they're governed by the doctrine of discovery. Close on their heels are all types of missionaries who come to the new world to spread the quote-unquote good word and enslave a whole lot of indigenous people and erase their culture and sometimes their lives. Yes. There is a Spanish missionary, Fri Juan Jose Toledo, and he writes a letter in 1764 to the New Mexico governor at the time, the Spanish colonial governor, documenting his experience with a group of pueblo women who he claims are possessed by various devils and must be exercised. Always women, huh?

I know. It's not interesting. Funny. Funny that, okay? So the first woman, this fry Juan Jose Toledo writes about, is a pregnant woman by the name of Maria Trujillo, and she's an indigenous woman from that area. And apparently he is alerted to her possession because she keeps fainting during mass,

during the prayer of exorcism. She's probably pregnant and she's standing too. I, it's most likely, very much that, yes. And I think what's very interesting about this particular case, no, it's more like cases of exorcisms is that another kind of group case, but it's also recorded in this letter. This letter has been kept and like its entirety can still be read. So I'm going to read a little bit from this letter. And of course it has this very long intro addressed to Lord Don Carlos

Fernandez, the blah blah blah of the blah blah blah of the blah blah blah, who cares. On the seventh day of December of the past year, I started to exercise Maria Trujillo in the holy church, who is the wife of Jose Valdas, resident of this jurisdiction, who for the love of God pleaded with me to exercise Maria, who since the month of June and for nine consecutive days after Mass and inside the church, would faint at the moment of the prayer of exorcism. We have witnessed that she would become covered in purple blemishes on her right shoulder, the elbow, the palm of the hand, and the knee. Okay, so she had a skin condition. Yeah, also the motherfucker's pregnant, like, let her...

He rashed? Yeah, who knows? Okay, oh gosh. She does give birth to the baby. She has a healthy, Okay, oh gosh. She does give birth to the baby. She has a healthy beautiful baby and yet she remained melancholy after the birth of her child which Fry Toledo is very concerned about and that is surely a sign of possession. We now know that sometimes people go through prolonged periods of depression due to hormonal reasons due to a variety of issues that have changed our lives. We didn't know that then. I think it's a real shame that all this shit seems to land on women. It is. It is really gnarly to think that nine months is the gestation period where like your life will completely change. Like that's on enough time. Like, give me a good five years.

No, we should extend. We should extend it. Let's try it. Yeah. Yeah, let's have, let's try it. And uh. Friend, friend. Favously Jerry Brown's mistress, friend.

Let's go. We need your help, friend. But it is not only Maria who is the fallen. There's another woman in town. her name is Francisco Morella, a young maiden, poor and cloistered 18 years old, more or less. And she left her home about four in the afternoon with an earthing jar to supply her household with water. And on her journey down to the stream, she hears the sound of a pig, but she can't see a pig. So something's up. Something's up. That must be possession, yeah. That's a deal. Yeah. Oh yeah.

She's hearing these noises. She felt a major shutter and fear until she arrived at her home again and her anxiety increased. So she essentially has a seizure and the priest is called in. She's taken to the church to see Fry Toledo and he writes, as soon as she arrived and saw me, there were imponderable shots which issued forth from her mouth and the clamor of the members of her body and the movement of her eyes. At the words of the Holy Gospel, her body made wild movements. She shouted and shrieked, ceased immediately once I grabbed the book of exorcisms. She began to make

insolent remarks to me. When I began the exorcism, she cursed me and tried to interrupt and impede the exorcism with great shouts, disgraces, and extreme shaking. By the time she appeared to be secured, the four men who held her were exhausted. So extreme feats of physicality in human strength. What if he's lying? I mean, that's the thing is like his account hit the written record. So that's the one that I can like print out and like, read to you. I wonder what our fact checking mechanisms were in that day. You know exactly. Yeah. Okay. Another girl is Bifal in this time, a 12 year old girl, Numeria De Chavez. She showed similar signs of possession. So all of these women are gathered in the church

and a group exorcism is initiated. When our fry to later starts reading from the exorcism scriptures, they are shaking, trembling, fainting, committing violent acts and other atrocities. Because they exhibited so much cackling, annoyances, etc. Which were horrifying. I had the good sense to perform the exorcism with the exposition of the sacrament.

So he gets a little like self-inflation there with his good sense. His good sense. On the 28th day of the exorcism. So this is a long ass time. Shot no, bullshit, bullshit every day. I guess I'm going back in there to shake. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, I'm not, okay.

On the 28th day of the exorcism, Lucifer left. My chile of give to you. Oh, Lucifer left, You know, I got you. Bringing a sign during the fainting spell of Maria Trujillo inside the church, he caused a great deal of anxieties and movements having expelled through her mouth the tooth of a horse with such effort that it became necessary to repeatedly place the stole, meaning his priestly stole, this like scarf thing, on her back. Finally, forced by the dominion of the word of God, she spit it out and remained at my feet.

Why are the demons so susceptible to Catholic iconography? Do they know you can just go get it at a store? That's what I was saying. Because it's the belief, baby, It's the rituals, the magic. It's imbued. I can draw a cross on a piece of paper and that's enough for the demon. Yeah dude. The fact that it's a faith that it's faith. Don't need a pence. Don't need a paper. I hate saying this because my grandmother would kill me. It doesn't pass the sniff test for me. I'm sorry, Catholics, I'm sorry. I really want to like you. You have such cool status. One good thing that maybe comes of this possession is eventually

apparently whatever friteledo exercises these these poor susceptible. 28 days. Yeah. And you know horse teeth blah blah blah. But. Yeah, what's up with the horse teeth? Yeah, and you don't, you know, we're fine. Oh. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. I mean, the devil works in mysterious ways.

Yeah. And the more mysterious, the more the wackier it is, like the better. The imagery is important in stories, and if you've got a horse teeth de teve, it's two. That'll play while in peoria as they say. Because these women were possessed though, all the crazy shit they said and did, fried Toledo excuses it, he partens it.

That is not their behavior. That was the devil who possessed them. Big of him. Big of him. Very big of him, but I think it's also reflective of the tact, falsism was taking in those days of conquest in the New World, because they were allowing indigenous people to continue some traditions, continue some rituals and worldviews, as long as they put a nice little

like Catholic cloak over it. Yeah, like the Virgin de Guadalupe is based on an as teca goddess. For sure and we talked a little bit when we were talking about the crampus back in in 33 about the mingling of pagan and Catholic folklore Exactly. sort of the Catholicism does right? Yeah. And I don't know if it's like a quality that's unique to Catholicism as much as it is, a quality that's unique to belief systems that have been imposed colonial-y, that like we import this, in this case it's Catholicism, but it could be something else. We import this belief system, but it becomes intermingled

with whatever the rituals and beliefs were of the area at the same rate, because those things are just as durable. Yeah, there is something nefarious in that too, in terms of the simulation, right? Because that's essentially what's happening. There is a racer that happens in the long term. Oh yeah, absolutely. We see the ones that have survived,

but I'm like just as much culture has fallen more culture has fallen by the wayside because of this imposition of this belief system. And like what is lost in that translation too. But something also very interesting, I think, about this particular case in New Mexico is that about 50 years earlier, there was a very organized and very successful indigenous revolt against the Spanish missionaries. We now call it the Pueblo Revolt. Interesting. There were 400 Spanish lies lost, including the vast majority of the priests who were in New Mexico, the Pueblo Indigenous Peoples and other Indigenous Peoples of the area, they were able to stake claim to more of their customs and land than happened elsewhere

in the American Southwest. And so there was already a spirit of rebellion and revolt. And so it could be that these Pueblo women who were quote unquote possessed were trolling right who are trolling the cat the idiot Catholic Spaniards. Yeah, and just kind of played their own game and was like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, bit of this resistance, this anti-colonial spiritual resistance, but not have to suffer the consequence of being silenced. So there's like a nice little, I don't, I mean that's an interpretation of it. Obviously, Fri Toledo and his letter is just like, oh my god, I'm the best. I got rid of all those demons. So, I don't know, some ways possession,

it gives a little like a valve, right? There's a pressure valve in some ways there. Too bad you gotta spit a porceteeth. That's kind of rough. It's better spitting them out than them going out the other way. You know what I'm saying? Your lips and gauze ears.

You know. Yeah. All right, let's flash forward a few centuries. Let's take ourselves to Georgetown. Let's talk a little bit about the exorcist, the novel Come Film, a friend. Sure. The novel was written in 1971 by William Peter Blatley. In 1973, so just a quick two years later, another William, William Friedkin, adapts the novel to the movie of the same

title. It stars Ellen Burstein, Max von Siddow, and our girl, Linda Blair. You haven't seen this movie, is that right? No, no, much to my great regret. I looked for it recently, I thought that I was so excited. I have somewhat recently, within the past couple of years, I saw that the exorcist was on Netflix before I canceled my subscription because they're making us do that password sharing

and I will go down, like Dito, I will go down on this ship. It ain't happening in my the whole reason I had Netflix was because I should could share it with my god damn parents. Yeah. They don't want me to do that then they don't want me as a customer. That was me doing a hand-wank. So what I about the exorcist is that I was back when I did have Netflix. I was very excited to see it and then I looked and they had done some it wasn't the right So since they had done it like TV series or something Oh

I was choked so I was like you know what next time and I haven't actually seen the exorcist I would love to see the exorcist. I think it's probably really good. I love horror movies I love old movies. It's right up my alley, I just happen to have not seen it much to my great regret because I suspect very much to talk about it. The excerpts in general give you, I won't do any spoilers, but what happens is Ellen Burstein plays an actress, she's living as a single mom, upper class, mixed lot of money is an actress, you know, famous movie actress. It's Ellen Burston as herself.

Kind of. And she's living in Washington, DC in Georgetown, specifically like this little neighborhood of DC, because she's shooting a film. So she's only there temporarily and she's there with her daughter. I will describe this scene because it's so good. Ellen Burstein's character is throwing a lavish, fun party for all her filmmaking co-star, friends. And her daughter comes downstairs in her 90

and looks at one of her party guests and says, you're going up there to die. And she says in like her little cute Linda Blair voice, but think she proceeds to piss herself on the living room carpet in front of everybody. Yeah, fire. A certain space.

The people need to know your daughter. You need to play the ground. It's like absolutely. I brown does the same thing. But like absolutely. I've done the same thing. And part of it, she doesn't break eye contact with the part that gets you to ask to. Fuck yeah, no, go back down, go back down. And everybody who's gathered around the piano to sing songs that their party, they're just

like, oh, what do we need to do? Oh, like parties over. She's fucked up. She's wasting it. Get her No, they're more like I think I need to go Well, yeah, so did she apparently So from there. It's kind of downhill for Linda Blair. She's a And that's the best thing that happens all night, man. Well, it's a long series of days and weeks and her mother takes her to the hospital and there's some really wonderful horror scenes of

medical equipment. Like they try and do CAT scan cat scan like you know, this is 1973 Medical medical shit is scary. Yeah, and any era. It's scary But when you're looking at kind of like really loud beat up metal machines Yeah, iron lungs a weird shit. Yeah exactly exactly. It's like traumatizing in its own way the doctors Tell Ellen Bernstein like, there's nothing we can do, maybe call a priest and she's like, excuse me, are you for real? Because she's not. Talk to the hand man. I'm amazing. That's what's really interesting about the exorcist is that this mom and daughter, they are not religious.

This household is not religious at all. That's how you let the devil in. Oh, see, there you go. It's these LA parties full of homosexuals. You wouldn't understand, but they invite the devil. Also, Ouija boards, Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, wherever it is. They manufacture the portal to hell as well. A Ouija board does make an appearance. That surprises me, wherever it is. They've made manufacturer the portal to hell as well. Oh, we gee, board does make an appearance.

That surprises me, not. Yeah, I don't want to give any spoilers, but we're definitely downhill. A priest eventually is called in, and he's this Greek American ex-boxer of a priest who's also a psychologist. What a writerly construct. What a screenwriter's approach to the clergy.

I know. I know. To be fair, I don't know the novel very well, so it might be lifted from the novel itself. Well, then shame on you, whoever wrote that. Yeah. Another interesting layer of it is his background in psychology, so he doesn't quite believe in exorcisms either.

Just like the mom doesn't believe in exorcisms and possessions. If I'm not nitpicking here, but if someone gets called to my exorcism, I wanted to at least be somebody who believes in what is happening. That's what makes I think the movie so good is that it starts with people who are incredulous and would never believe it and slowly over the course of the movie and through the trials and tribulations and Linda Blair spewing green paper everywhere.

Fuck you. Yeah. I know I got you. They switched to like this is what we got to do. One, this is incredibly disrespectful to me and my family, and two, she has floated for several moments. The several moments, yeah, yeah. It's pretty intense, yeah. I won't tell you about the ending because you should watch it.

It's a really good movie. Watch it. The story is also based on a real life life 14 year old. Who floated for several moments? Several of them. So okay. Dan that's the scariest amount. Okay. His name. Wow, Lindobler. Lindobler. Actually his name was Ronald Edwin Hunkler. Get this, as an adult, was a NASA engineer. Wow, what an intern. I know. What a success story.

Yeah, he worked on technology that became panded and helped the space shuttle panels with extreme heat in space without the atmosphere of the Earth. The heat is really gnarly when you're in front of the sun. And so he developed a technology that was integral to the Apollo space missions of the 1960s. Wow. So our boy, Ronald Edwin Hunkler,

was born in 1935 in Cottage City, Missouri. Middle-class family, normal baby normal, until he hit the age of 14, and he reported constantly hearing the sound of knocking and scratching in his bedroom walls. It's raccoons. It could be. It could sometimes you think you have either severe mental illness or demonic possession But it's just raccoons. Well apparently stuff was getting real crazy chairs We're moving without anybody pushing or pulling them His bed shook whenever he was in it

Which is kind of, okay, 14-year-old, yeah. Apparently, there was so much furniture being like dragged across the family floors that they were scarred from the sliding of heavy furniture. And there was a picture of Christ on a wall that constantly shook. Turn it upside down. Whenever Forging World Hunkler walked by. I mean, I don't want to use the phrase devil's advocate on textile obviously since. But have you considered moving the portrait to a different wall and seeing if it does the same thing? Because it might be like structural more than the satanic.

Structural, yeah, the raccoons. The raccoons eat those, the mampaches, bang on the back of the wall. Well, the family doesn't do that. Instead, they call in a Jesuit priest, William Boudrearn. This priest conducts more than 20 exorcism rituals on 14-year-old hunkler in the span of three months. It's a lot. Yeah, father, boudre, and kept a journal of all these exorcisms, of all these rituals. And he's quoted as writing in this journal

that there was scratching, which be out of rhythm of marching soldiers. A relic of Saint Margaret Mary was thrown to the floor without anybody touching it. Okay. Around this time, Hunkler and his family relocated to St. Louis. Boudre and the priest said that, quote, on one evening, the word Louis, as in St. Louis, was written on the boy's ribs in deep red scratches.

Enjoy that spooky. No, yeah, I'm loving it. Hunkler broke into violent tantrums, screaming, yelling, bouts of Latin phrases being tossed about. Latin Latin. Finally, the exorcisms worked. He no longer had these compulsions and the shaking and the furniture and the portrait of Jesuskin, Jiggy. At the time when it happened, it was reported in newspapers and stuff. We have established many times, like especially around around, like, in bygone eras, when the ability for the average person, let's say, which still am I that great? But the ability for the average person, a fact check, the average

news article was lesser. You could just straight up say shit and eat anything you wanted in a newspaper if it would sell the news. That's true. You could say that Bram Stoker wrote the version of Dracula that you were serializing in your newspaper. And he didn't, to wit. Yeah. You could talk about Cadbury Soros. You could talk about King Tutskurs. You could talk about,

fucking Arthur Conan Doyle, our best friend, apparently, just had open mic on fucking newspapers back then and she just say whatever. It didn't really cement itself into the cultural zeitgeist until William Peter, blackly wrote the novel in 1971. And even he didn't read about it in a newspaper. He heard about it from a professor of his at Georgetown,

which is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit University in the US. So, this professor, some way connected to Catholicism, obviously, either priest himself or religious. He told, blotly, the story, and blotly was so entranced by it. Added a few flourishes here and there, Wrote the novel, 1971. Three years later, the exorcist, the film comes out. Linda Blair, her head goes round and round and round. But a being, but a boom, the horror genre is born exorcisms back on top. Good, good, good. Not all of us, but like so many of us have religious trauma, but that's such a potent well. If not religious trauma, then like religious reference.

Reference, fascination, yeah, all of it, yeah. Cultural capacity, whatever. Yeah, like you were saying, you're religious friends being like, oh the scariest movies for me are definitely like the different ones. The demon ones, because that could really happen. Yeah. Because I've been instructed my whole life that that's the shit that you need to look out for the devil's always on your back, right? Yeah, no exactly. And the exorcist has multiple sequels. I think the second one is like the exorcist, the heretic or heretic. And Linda Blair isn't it and her 20s and apparently the Yelp reviews were low on that film. The tomatoes were rotten, the IMDb's were down. But I think I mentioned at the top there's a new movie starring our boy Russell Crowe. I don't know why he's our boy, but he's in it. No, I'm not sure.

And that's like, he's a big name doctor, it's 2023, it's still a thing. It's still frightening, it's still a source for fright, the idea of the demon. Totally. Has occurred, recurred, re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re- re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re re was a big part of that. Like for reference, like when I hear the word exorcism, I think of a young girl vomiting green puke everywhere. And yeah, it's spinning her head around and wearing a night gown and crap crawling down the stairs and telling people all kinds of rank shit about her pose. Exactly. Yeah. And it's like, okay, wow, that really became a cultural flashpoint for ex exercise. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll finish with this quote that I thought was very interesting from a writer named Ed Simon who was writing in the LA review of books because he's reviewing a book, the Penguin

Book of Exorcisms. Which we've gone to that point too. There's a Penguin Book of Exorcisms, yeah. Just tell me that the little Penguin logo has his head backwards because that's what I do. Wait, let me double check. Fuck it doesn't. It really, they really missed on that one. This is why you need a communication.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Ed Simon writes about ecstasyism in general in this quote. He says, part of this narrative's popularity is that it's a dramatic enactment of the uncanny strangeness of having a human mind. We're often split, confused, sublimated, uncertain. There are aspects of our own personality we don't know or understand.

The kindest of people will engage in uncharacteristic cruelty and malignant souls sometimes extend charity and compassion. Tremendous changes in personality can seem like possession. When it comes to useful theories of mind, rather than reading analytical philosophy, you'd do just as well to watch the exorcist. Brrrr! So I clean that pea soup off my monitor. Actually, I read somewhere that I wasn't just pea soup, it was porridge with like split pea

soup to augment for color. Mixed in. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, but I that quote is really interesting because it's it begins to deliver it from a religious context and starts to bring in the psychological context of like what is actually happening. Right, because like if we don't accept a religious context and I don't say that in any way judgmentally of anybody who does. But if we don't accept a religious context that we must look for more quotidian reasons that this is all happening, mental illness, the whimsicality of human nature,

the ways that we all change in certain moments, just peculiarities of perceived. Or expressions of power, like thinking about the Pueblo women, the pregnant mother, and the other women of the town, yeah. Expressions of power, expressions of resistance, or, you know, whatever. Or expressions of stress, or expressions of oppression, or expressions of panic, or expressions of whatever.

It's interesting stuff. It's definitely interesting stuff. I think that there is funnily enough right at the end. I was thinking of my favorite set of RL-stein fear-street books. They were called the cheerleaders series and in every different sequel, the spirit of Sarah Fier had possessed one of the cheerleaders and one of the cheerleaders was driven to kill the other cheerleaders on the cheerleaders squatting all these grease in my eyes. It's like four or five of these are fucking excellent.

And part of it, I think part of it for me was the mystery of figure like who's got the other cheerleaders on the cheerleaders squad and all these grease and whizzes, like four or five of these are fucking excellent. And part of it, I think part of it for me was the mystery of figure like who's got the evil, that's what they call it, who's got the evil in the book. But then the other thing is like, it's interesting this idea of being like subsumed or possessed by something other than yourself and just behaving in all of these, like, uncharacteristic way. Yeah. And it's, like, both terrifying and almost kind of, like, thrilling and liberating in some way, that you could be like, fuck you, bitch, fuck you, and, and, and, and, like, they'd be like, well, she's possessed. Yeah. And we can do it without that.

But then it's also, like, really scary the idea that you could just out of nowhere be seized by a possession or a mental illness or whatever it is. I mean, to bring it back to the mound's puberty. Like, as you were saying that, I was like, oh my God, it's just a huge metaphor for her puberty, especially in the exorcist where she's 14, you know, Linda Blair plays a 14 year old.

So Reagan is her name, by the way. Reagan is the metaphor for American. Yeah. Ronald Reagan. John connections here on Trick or Treat. Oh my God. Ronald Reagan was a demon. It was that's what we're learning. He was possessed. Triggered down economics. Look out, economics.

Yeah, that's for sure. So that's a wrap. That's a wrap. That's the end of the episode. Done. Done. Wrap it up. Actually, could you give me some deepened gibberish,

and I'll translate it. And what Taylor's demon meant by that is make sure to become a monthly subscriber on coffee.com. Okay, oh hyphen fi dot com slash bittersweet infamy and Access some rad movie moments, especially this October's double feature Lucha libre Cassandro and El Santo and also next week we're gonna have a finale and we're gonna have Mitchell josey's fiance but not for long because in the break in between seasons. They're gonna give me Well, Josie's fiance, but not for long because in the break in between seasons, they're gonna give me a sandwich! Mewage! We'll see you then.

I'm excited. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com. Or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account. And KO-FIN-F-I-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D The No Pressure. Bitter Sweet Enthamies Free, Baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bitter Sweet Enthamies. Or just pass the podcast along to a friend you think would do it.

Stay Sweet. The sources that I used for this episode were the article Scandinavian Transformation of Dracula by Ingmar Sormin, published in the Nordic Journal of English Studies in 2020 volume 19 issue 5. I also read the Wikipedia articles for both the Icelandic and the Swedish versions of Powers of Darkness. Blah! The sources that I used for this episode included a review written by Ed Simon in the LA Review of Books

about the book on exercising demons of penguin classics written by Joseph P. Leica. I read an article a national geographic entitled The Real History of Exorcisms that you don't see in movies written by Melissa Sartore published April 18th 2023. I read an article in the Guardian entitled Boy whose case inspired the exorcist is named by US magazine. This was written by Maya Yang, published December 20th, 2021. I read excerpts from the book Witchcraft in Early North America, written by Allison Games, and published by Roman and Littlefield in 2010. I read an article from a website called

Indigenous Court Retraining, and the article was entitled Christopher Columbus and the Doctrine of Discovery, five things to know, published March 30th, 2023. I read an article from TheGrunge.com, entitled The Most Famous and Horrific Exorcisms in History, written by Sarah Crocker and published May 3rd, 2023. I looked at the Wikipedia page for Leigh Dunn possessions and Jean Diagnos.

And lastly I watched the 1973 film The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin, starting Ellen Burston and Linda Blair. A big thanks to our monthly subscriber, Jonathan Mountain. If you too would like to subscribe, go ahead and hop on coffee.com slash bittersweet into me. That's k-o-f-i.com. SlashBitterSweetEmpathy. And you can throw us a few bucks,

become a monthly subscriber, and access our Bittersweet film club. This podcast is a proud member of the 604 podcast network. The interstitial music you heard earlier was written by Mitchell Collins. And the song you're listening to now is Tees Street by Brian Steeld. you