It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: Two Tales of Classic Horror, by Saki and Bierce

Episode Date: October 19, 2025

Margaret reads you "The Open Window" by Saki and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" by Ambrose BierceSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he's still,

from the rich and gifts to the poor, I'm not that generous. It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million that had not bought a ticket

to help him escape. So we're saying like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups.

On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper. Listen to season four of Snaff.

with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. People called them murderers. Ten years later, they were gods. Today, no one knows their names. A group of maverick surgeons who took on the medical establishment who risked everything to invent open-heart surgery. Welcome to the Wild West of American Medicine. I'm Chris Pine, and this is cardiac cowboys. If you like medical dramas, if you like heart-pounding thrillers,

You will love Cardiac Cowboys. Listen on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Sponsored by Jasper, AI Build for Marketers. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky,

this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast sets in the bridge-wise. Audio Universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cool Zone Media.

Book Club, Book Club, Book Club. Hello, and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club. The only book club where you don't have to do the reading, because I do it for you. The only book club where you don't have to go to your English class

to hear an insufferable gay person who won't shut up because I am the insufferable gay person in your phone, on demand. I'm your host, Marker Kiljoy, and this week, it is still spooky month. And let's be honest, it's always spooky month. I have this really love-hate relationship with horror. I really like spooky and supernatural and the things that make you feel closer to the veil and I think about death all the time

and I write about it a lot but I also like can't stand a lot of types of horror just like the slasher stuff or I don't know a lot of it doesn't work for me so when I say it might always be spooky month

that doesn't mean that I'll read you everything because whatever okay we are still doing horror because it is October and I wanted to do some old timey stories so we're going to do some old timey stories because I really like contrasting new stories and old stories and like thinking about the ways that story itself has changed and how we think about the supernatural has changed and

all this kind of stuff. We are going to do two stories for you this week because they are slightly shorter. And I am excited about these stories because they're both really fun and spooky. They're also both written by authors I'm really fascinated by and I want to learn more about possibly enough that I want to do cool people episodes about them. And they sit this really interesting place in the lineage of the horror genre. I never actually heard these stories before, which you can call me a poser about if you would like. All engagement is good engagement. Don't call me a poser. It'll hurt my feelings. Okay. The first story is called The Open Window, and it's by Hector Hugh Monroe, better known and usually attributed by his pen name

Saki. He was inspired by people like Oscar. Wild, who I did do a bunch of episodes about on Cool People. And like Oscar Wild, Saki was gay. And actually, it's going to come up in a really interesting way in this story and this, like, total offhand way that is like not what you would expect from the 19th century. His pen name Saki is a reference to a symbolic and erotic figure in Arabic and Persian poetry. And Saki's writing is remembered for how it satirizes English social conventions around the turn of the century and seems to often feature stuffy aristocrats being eaten by wild animals. And we are pro-old aristocrats being eaten by wild animals on this podcast, although that's not

what this story is. This story is one of his supernatural ghost stories, and it's full of little jabs at weird Victorian mannerisms, and it's got a twist because it's a horror story. How can a horror story not have a twist? Actually, if you go back old enough, they probably don't of twists. But this story. The Open Window by Saki. My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttall, said a very self-possessed

young lady of 15. In the meantime, you must try and put up with me. Frampton Nuttall endeavored to say the correct something, which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately,

he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a secession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing. I know how it'll be, his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat. You will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice. Frampton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division. Do you know many of the people around here? asked the niece,

when she judged that they had had sufficient, silent communion. Hardly a soul, said Frampton. My sister was staying here at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here. He made the last statement in a tone. tone of distant regret. Then you know practically nothing about my aunt, pursued the self-possessed young lady. Only her name and address, admitted the caller.

He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation. Her great tragedy happened just three years ago, said the child. That would be since your sister's time.

Her tragedy? asked Frampton. somehow in this restful country spot, tragedy seemed out of place. You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon, said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn. Just as a side note, the phrase French window here, I think, is referencing what we would think of as like glass porch doors. It is quite warm for the time of the year, said Frampton. But has that window got anything to do with the tragedy? out through that window three years ago to a day her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting they never came back

in crossing the moor to their favorite snipe shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog it had been that dreadful wet summer you know and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning their bodies were never recovered that was the dreadful part of it. Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became a falteringly human. Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just like they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing, Bertie, why do you bow? As he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling

they will all walk in through that window. She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Frampton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late and making her appearance. I hope Vera has been amusing you, she said. She has been quite interesting, said Frampton. I hope you don't mind the open window, said Mrs. Sappleton briskly. My husband and brothers will be back home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you men folk, isn't it? She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Frampton, it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but

only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic. He was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary. And do you know what else is here to pay a visit? It's the horrible visage of goods and services that support this show. I can't do it with this. I'm trying to do it with this show. Support this show.

Isn't that fun? Don't we all love? Bads. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads?

Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today.

I forgot whose podcasts we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. People called them murderers. Ten years later, they were gods.

Today, no one knows their names. A group of maverick surgeons who took on the medical establishment who risked everything to invent open-heart surgery. Welcome to the Wild West of American Medicine. I'm Chris Pine, and this is Cardiac Cowboys. If you like medical dramas, if you like heart-pounding thrillers, you will love Cardiac Cowboys. Listen on the iHeart Radio app or wherever.

you listen to podcasts. Sponsored by Jasper. AI build for marketers. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream?

A familiar place can look completely alien. Get back, everyone's going to be next. And if you see, The devil walking around inside of another man. You must cut out the very heart of him. Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning. From IHeart Podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jewel State and Ray Wise.

Listen to Havoc Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The devil walks in Aberstown. All I know is what I've been told, and that to have truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her, I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her.

They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County. A show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. And I'm going to start doing the thing where I come back from ads where I, like, say the last sentence or so before the break.

It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he, Frampton, should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary. The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absent of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise, announced Frampton, who labored under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are, Hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. On the matter of diet, they are not so much in agreement, he continued. No, said Mrs. Sappleton in a voice that only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention, but not to what Frampton was saying.

Here they are at last, she cried, just in time for tea. and don't they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes? Frampton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear, Frampton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.

In the deepening twilight, three figures were walking across the lawn. towards the window. They all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired, brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly, they neared the house.

Then a hoarse, young voice chanted out in the dusk. I said, Birdie, why do you bow? Frampton grabbed wildly at his side, stick and hat. The hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into a hedge to avoid an imminent collision. Here we are, my dear, said the bearer of the white mackintosh coming in through the window. Fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up? A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttall, said Mrs. Sappleton.

who could only talk about his illnesses, and then dashed off without a word of goodbye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost. I expect it was the spaniel, said the niece calmly. He told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him, enough to make anyone lose their nerve. Romance at short notice was her specialty.

Okay, I always say I like that story so much because... I like that story so much because I like how mischievous it is. Also, we don't use the word romance to mean fantasy enough. Like, why are they two separate genres? Fantasy, romanticcy, but they're synonyms. They're already synonyms. Anyway, the reveal at the end of the story that the teenager just loves

fucking with all the adults around her by making them ghost stories. I love. I also love that the protagonist's name is Frampton Nuttall, which is absolutely the perfect name for like a boring, neurotic Victorian Englishman. It also is a name that I would make up

if I was trying to make fun of the English. I also thought that there was a line in there about like, you like the menfolk, don't you? And I actually was mistaken on first read. I thought it was like, you're a gay. But actually it was just something like just like you menfolk like you know oh you're always

getting mud on the carpets and the story was also released in the 1910s about 20 to 30 years after the big Gothic revival of the 1880s and 1890s which was the time period that gave us things like Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of 1886

Oscar Wilds the picture of Dorian Gray 1891 and Bram Stoker's Dracula of 1897 and then Hazel who does a lot of the episode prep and picks a lot of stories, said about this, that Gothic fiction or gothic horror, depending on how you like it, is obsessed with ghosts, and it's obsessed with hysteric women, and they're obsessed with this ever-creeping fear of the past intruding upon the present, like in Jane Eyre. So, Hazel wrote this, by the way. In prep for this

episode, Hazel read a lot of, ooh, emotionally tortured lady saw a ghost, and it's a metaphor, kind of stories. And so this one was, frankly, a breath of fresh air. So the story is really interesting. One, because we see all of those things, madness, ghosts, etc., played for laughs. But we also see a young girl acting with agency and weaponizing those stereotypes for her own amusement. And it feels like the story is really poking fun at this preoccupation where every small thing must have a creepy tragedy behind it and it's driving the wife insane, especially given how easily Frampton Nuttall, whose name none of us are going to get over. It's especially given how easily Frampton Nuddle is led to believe a supernatural tale over what his own eyes are

telling him that like, you know, men live in the house, that the returned hunters are alive and well. He's still just like, oh, it's clearly a ghost. And it ends up being a story about how easily we believe that women are crazy in a fun way. And that's something. It's a signpost in the development for the genre. Horror has mostly been supernatural and folkloric through the end of the 1800s like ghost stories, haunted mansions, vampires, all that shit. And at the turn of the 20th century, it takes a turn towards psychological and fantastical, cosmic horror, alien pulp fiction, and all that. So this story's emphasis on sanity and whose narration we're willing to believe ends up foreshadowing a lot of where horror is going to go. And we're going to trace how gothic horror becomes

psychological horror becomes cosmic horror with this next story. story. Our next story is called An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Beers. Beers is really fucking interesting from what I can tell. He's mostly known as this satirist and journalist like a lot of writers back then who are like kind of like just doing their thing or whatever. But he's also well respected for his short stories. He was born in Ohio. He fought for the union and the civil war. And he writes a lot about his experiences of war in a way that I think I'd really respect, but I haven't read all of his stuff yet. But it seems like he both hated the horrors of war and he fucking hated Confederates, which is the right mix, if you ask me. Like he has this whole

story that the name of it escapes me because I forgot to put it in the script, but it's like a story about like a hanging and it's about a confederate being hanged. And it's just this like, I don't know, really, it's a shockingly visceral description of the experience of being hanged. He also wrote The Devil's Dictionary, which is the whole dictionary of satirical definitions. There's actually a modern one called The Contradictionary by Crime Think. That's really cool. And I think it must be a reference to this one. But within the Devil's Dictionary, there's a couple good ones.

Like, conservative, noun, a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. And, egotist, noun. a person of low taste, more interested in himself than me. And maybe the one of the season is autocrat, noun, a dictatorial gentleman with no other restraint upon him than the hand of the assassin, the founder and patron of that great political institution,

the dynamite bombshell system. He also wrote a satirical poem about, I think President McKinley getting assassinated, the year before President McKinley was assassinated and so he kind of got in some hot water about that and in 1913 he went down to Mexico to embed with Pancho Villa to cover the Mexican Revolution as a conflict journalist

and he disappeared and his body was never recovered oral tradition in that area of Mexico holds that he was shot by Spaniards but if Game of Thrones has taught me anything it's that if a character dies off screen they're coming back so I like to believe that Beers is still out there killing imperialists and writing witty little diatribes

but eventually I might do a whole thing about him and actually the beginning of this story talks about how sometimes a person dies and their body disappears and I don't know it's just interesting because then like his body was never recovered just saying just saying this is a ghost story written by him it's from 1886 and so it's from that gothic revival and it's about 20 years earlier than the story we just read.

And it's got a good twist, and maybe you'll even see it coming. I didn't, Hazel claims that they did. The story is called An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Beers. And you're going to have to bear with me. The first paragraph has a lot of V's and Thows and Hazeths, and I'm going to do my best. An inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Beers For there be diverse sorts of death Somewhere in the body remaineth

And in some it vanishes quite away with the spirit This commonly occurth only in solitude Such as God's will And none seeing the end We say the man is lost or gone on some long journey Which indeed he hath But sometimes it hath happened in sight of many as abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of death, the spirit also dieth. And this it hath been known

to do while yet the body was in vigor for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body. But after a season is raised up again and in that place where the body did decay. Pondering these words of Halle, whom God rest, and questioning their full meaning, as one who, having an intimation, yet doubts if there be not something behind other than that which he has discerned. I noted not whether I had strayed until a sudden chill wind striking my face revived me in a sense of my surroundings. I observed with astonishment that everything seemed unfamiliar. On every side of me stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of plain, covered with a tall overgrowth of sear grass, which rustled and whistled in the autumn wind,

with heaven knows what mysterious and disquieting suggestion. Pertruded at long intervals above it, stood strangely shaped in somber-colored rocks, which seemed to have an understanding with one another and to exchange looks of uncomfortable significance, as if they had reared their heads to watch the issue of some foreseen event. A few blasted trees here and there appeared as leaders in this malevolent conspiracy.

of silent expectation. The day I thought must be far advanced, though the sun was invisible, and although sensible that the air was raw and chill, my consciousness of that fact was rather mental than physical. I had no feeling of discomfort. Over all the dismal landscape,

a canopy of low, lead-colored clouds hung like a visible curse. In all this, there were a menace and a portent, a hint of evil, an intimation of doom bird, beast or insect there was none the wind sighed and the bare branches

of the dead trees and the gray grass bent to whisper its dread secret to the earth but no other sound nor motion broke the awful repose of that dismal place I observed in the herbage a number of weather-worn stones evidently shaped with tools

they were broken covered with moss and half-sunkin in the earth Some lay prostrate, some leaned at various angles. None was vertical. They were obviously headstones of graves, though the graves themselves no longer existed as either mounds or depressions. The years had leveled all. Scattered here and there, more massive blocks showed where some pompous tomb or ambitious monument had once flung its feeble defiance at oblivion. So old seemed these relics, these vestiges of vanity and memorials of affection and piety. so battered and worn and stained,

so neglected, deserted, forgotten the place, that I could not help thinking myself the discoverer of the burial ground of a prehistoric race of men whose very name was long extinct. Filled with these reflections, I was for some time heedless of the sequence of my own experiences,

but soon I thought, how came I hither? A moment's reflection seemed to make this all clear and explain at the same time, though in a disquieting way, the singular character with which my fancy had invested all that I saw or heard. I was ill. I remembered now that I had been prostrated by a sudden fever, that my family had told me in my periods of delirium,

I had constantly cried out for liberty and air, and had been held in bed to prevent my escape out of doors. Now I had eluded the vigilance of my attendants and wandered hither to, To where? I could not conjecture. Clearly, I was at a considerable distance from the city where I dwelt, the ancient and famous city of Carcosa. No signs of human life were anywhere visible nor audible, no rising smoke, no watchdogs bark,

no lowing of cattle, no shouts of children at play, nothing but that dismal burial place, with its air of mystery and dread due to my own disordered brain. was I not becoming again delirious there beyond human aid was it not indeed all an illusion of my madness I called aloud the names of my wives and sons reached out my hands in search of theirs even as I walked among the crumbling stones and in the withered grass a noise behind me caused me to turn about a wild animal a lynx was approaching the thought came to me If I break down here in the desert, if the fever return and I fail, this beast will be at

my throat. I sprang toward it shouting. It trotted tranquilly by within a hand's breath of me and disappeared behind a rock. A moment later, a man's head appeared to rise out of the ground a short distance away. He was ascending the farther slope of a low hill, whose crest was hardly to be distinguished from the general level. His whole figure soon came into view against the background of gray cloud. He was half naked, half-clad in skins. His hair was unkempt, his beard, long and ragged. In one hand he carried a bow and arrow.

The other held a blazing torch with a long trail of black smoke. He walked slowly and with caution, as if he feared falling into some open grave concealed by the tall grass. This strange apparition surprised, but did not alarm. And taking such a course as to intercept him, I met him almost face to face, accosting him with a familiar salutation. God keep you. He gave no heed, nor did he arrest his pace.

Good stranger, I continued, I am ill and lost, direct me, I beseech you, to Carcosa. The man broke into a barbarous chant in an unknown tongue, passing on and away, an owl on the branch of a decaying. cayed tree hooded dismally and was answered by another in the distance. Looking upward, I saw through a sudden rift in the clouds, al-Badarin and the hiatus. In all this there was a hint of night, the lynx, the man with the torch, the owl. Yet I saw, I saw even the stars in absence of the darkness. I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard. Under what awful spell did I exist? And, dear listeners, I exist under a spell where twice an episode, I have to break the flow and promote the wonderful ads that support this podcast.

Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop? What? Yeah. Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads.

Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today.

I forgot who's podcast. we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the I-Hart Radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. People called them murderers. Ten years later, they were gods. Today, no one knows their names. A group of maverick surgeons who took on the medical establishment who risked everything.

to invent open heart surgery. Welcome to the Wild West of American Medicine. I'm Chris Pine, and this is Cardiac Cowboys. If you like medical dramas, if you like heart-pounding thrillers, you will love Cardiac Cowboys. Listen on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Sponsored by Jasper, AI Build for Marketers. There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town.

You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth. and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look completely alien? Get back, everyone's going to be next.

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him. Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning. from iHeart podcasts and grim and mild from aaron mankey this is havoctown a new fiction podcast sets in the bridgewater audio universe starring jule state and ray wise listen to havoctown on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts the devil walks in aberstown all i know is what i've been told and that's a half-churchase town all i know is what i've been told and that's a half-jerk truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that

law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. And we're back. I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard. under what awful spell did I exist.

I seated myself at the root of a great tree, seriously to consider what it were best to do. That I was mad I could no longer doubt, yet I recognized a ground of doubt in the conviction. A fever, I had no trace. I had, with all, a sense of exhilaration and vigor, altogether unknown to me, a feeling of mental and physical exaltation.

My senses seemed all alert. I could feel the air as a ponderous sight, substance. I could hear the silence. A great root of the giant tree against whose trunk I leaned as I sat held, enclosed in its grasp a slab of stone, a part of which protruded into a recess formed by another root. The stone was thus partly protected from the weather, though greatly decomposed. Its edges were worn round, its corners eaten away, its surface deeply furrowed and scaled, Glittering particles of mica were visible in the earth around it, vestiges of its decomposition. This stone had apparently marked the grave out of which the tree had sprung ages ago.

The tree's exacting roots had robbed the grave and made the stone a prisoner. A sudden wind pushed some dry leaves and twigs from the uppermost face of the stone. I saw the low-relief letters of an inscription and bent to read it. God in heaven. My name in full. The date of my birth. The date of my death. A level shaft of light illuminated the whole side of the tree as I sprang to my feet in terror. The sun was rising in the rosy east. I stood between the tree and his broad red disc. No shadow darkened the trunk. A chorus of howling wolves saluted the dawn. I saw them sitting on their haunches, singly, and in groups,

on the summits of irregular mounds and two myoli, filling a half of my desert prospect and extending to the horizon. And then I knew that these were the ruins of the ancient and famous city of Carcosa. Such are the facts imparted to the medium Bayrolles by the spirit, The Seb Alar Robarden. it's the end of the story. Okay, so the prose in the story is so biblical without feeling too purple or overwritten, at least for the standards at the time. Like, it's not, like, you can see the difference in only like 20 years later how they were writing, but 19th century had this whole

thing. And it uses the like, the was dead all along trope, which is a sort of staple of gothic horror, but it also gets used in contemporary stuff. Like, um, the show lost. Spoilers for the TV show lost, I guess, even though, um, whatever. fuck lost is the longest shaggy dog story, the most expensive shaggy dog story every put to film. And I think that like he was dead all along, trope isn't exactly my favorite trope these days. But where they come from before it's really as much of a trope is actually much more interesting to me. And I think that Beers uses it to heighten the horror really well rather than just to kill all the stakes, right? Because it's like, oh, fuck, I'm dead.

Instead of like, ah, that explains it. I'm dead. Five seasons in. Fuck you long. which I don't think they even knew what was going to happen ahead of time. I'm so mad about Lost. Okay, and then Hazel wrote a lot of really interesting stuff about this. So I'm going to read it to you. I'm really drawn to this impulse to establish the point-of-view character as sane and fully capacitated. Gothic horror and later Cosmic are so fixated on madness, but the choice to zoom in on sanity is a really interesting contrast.

It's an important part of this story's horror that our narrator fully understands what's going on and can be trusted when he reveals that he's dead, right? And even the spirit name checks at the end. Beirst didn't just invent this story. No, he wants you to know the name of the medium they channeled it through. He's actively trying to cultivate as much credibility in the framing of the story as he can. So this story is like weirdly and quietly important in the horror lineage, and that it introduces a ton of names they get picked up and recycled by later authors.

Most notably, the city of Carcosa gets picked up by Robert W. Chambers for his 1895 short story collection called The King in Yellow, which is a series of interrelated stories where the characters discover and read a play called the King in Yellow that contains profound, incomprehensible truths about the universe that drive you mad. And as a sidebar, Chambers is also using yellow as the color of madness, much like Book Club alum Charlotte Perkins Gilman does later in the yellow wallpaper, which you can go back and re-listen to if you want. So the king in yellow, which goes on to inspire none other than, and please note that I'm crossing myself in penance when I name-checked this fucking guy,

H.P. Lovecraft. The ancient city of Carcosa, as well as the names Hali, Hyades, and Aldebaran, appear in Lovecraft's Gifulu Mythos. Obviously influential in the genre, less because readers at the time were reading him, he died early and lonely and broke, as he deserved, Lovecraft again, but because other authors were reading him and being inspired. And also, Carcosa shows up in a ton of other stuff, like True Detective, chilling adventures of Sabrina, and also Book Club alum Haley Piper's new book, A Game in Yellow, which sounds really fucking rad. It's about a lesbian couple that starts microdosing that play that drives you mad,

The King in Yellow, for sex reasons, and it's a happy coincidence that these two are back-to-back. Anyway, this shit even pops up in a song of Ice and Fire. by George R. Martin. There's multiple Wikipedia pages about the stuff if you want a good rabbit hole. But Beers doesn't give us too much information about the famed and ancient city of Carcosa. It's maybe in space, or maybe it's like Atlantis, but in the desert, depending on who's writing it. Hazel's take is that for Beers, Carcosa's meant to sound like carcass, or whatever it just does, regardless of what the author intended. So the city ends up serving as a parallel to the narrator's body, the city as body. Initially, the narrator is looking for the city he inhabited.

in the splendor of its heyday. After he realizes that he's dead, he sees the city in ruins, ancient and distant. But that's all the city really has to, quote, unquote, do in the story. But importantly, none of the world building is what's brought forward in horror legacy. But that's okay, because this story isn't about world building. It's about mood and fuck does Beers know how to construct a mood. For me, Hazel, this story is at a really interesting junction and juncture. Please cut that.

the stories that are really interesting juncture and horror legacy. We've talked before about gothic horror being about ghosts and madness and the fear of the past and truding upon the present, which is absolutely the world that this story is swimming in with the death and spirits and ancient ruins. But Beers is sometimes credited as an early writer of psychological horror, and we know that this story goes on to influence early cosmic horror. And that's a genre that's also interested in madness,

but more so about the un-understandable, the vastness of the universe, the inevitability that the future will, come to erase the present. To draw an overly simplified binary, we often see gothic horror stories is about fear of oneself and one's family members, a fear of the known, and cosmic horror is often about the fear of things beyond us and beyond our comprehension, fear of time and space and oblivion, a fear of the unknown. And to me, Hazel, an inhabitant of Carcosa sits at such an interesting place between the two. This isn't a story where the ghost is a manifestation of trauma, death, and decay

are very literal here. The ancient ruins of the city are not invoked to mark that the past is here now, but to show that the future has arrived and has pushed you out of the way. Literally no one can see or interact with the narrator. We get some good like isn't nature spooky scenes that are a touchstone of gothic fiction. And we also get a cosmic horror classic unknowable tongue spoken by the man on the road. At the end of the day, this is a story about waking up to realize the world is continued without you. The slang you're used to isn't hip anymore. The young people are suddenly so much younger than you, time comes for us all in the end.

Or something like that. And Hazel wrote me a lot about this because both of us have been having a stressful week. I also really like, this is Margaret's voice now. Well, it's always my voice, but this is insane what I think about it. HP Lovecraft is like famously a racist,

and Cosmic car for him is about this fear of like the unknown spooky foreigners and nature. He writes about trees. like he's just terrified of trees, you know, so he's clearly afraid of like the chaos and like change and diversity and organic stuff because he's sounds like a skill issue. But I think it's really interesting that so people will be like, oh, well, Cosmic Carr comes from this shit. Well, actually Cosmic Carr, if you trace it back far enough, is someone who like fought for the union and went off to go support Poncho Villa, you know, who is famously not a right-wing character

in history. So whatever. Take that. HP Lovecraft, the dead person. And yeah, I don't know. That's it for today. Two early psychological horror adjacent stories about madness, credibility, point of view, and ghosts. We got both of these stories from classic tales of horror from Canterbury Classics. I'm Margaret Kiljoy. You can find me on this feed and on the internet. I have a substack. It's called Birds Before the Storm. And that's as good of a place as I need to keep up with me. I'm on the various things. take care of yourself, stay safe, stay dangerous, and never forget that the HP of HP Lovecraft stands for Harry Potter.

Good night. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources where it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from

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