Last Podcast On The Left - My Best Friend's Exorcism: An Interview with Grady Hendrix

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

It's Thanksgiving week in America, so we're taking a break and entering a coma-like state by ingesting nearly-lethal amounts of gravy.Instead of a new episode of Last Podcast on the Left, we're unlocking one of our many Patreon interviews. On this episode, Ben & Henry sit down with Grady Hendrix — the author behind My Best Friend's Exorcism, Horrorstör, and The Final Girl Support Group.

Hey, what's up everyone? How ya doing? Ben Kisler here, hanging out with Henry Zabrowski. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you all so much for giving to our Patreon. Without you or nothing, we're dead. We appreciate you endlessly. Today we are honored to have with us a fantastic author. As a matter of fact, Henry has read one of the books and you absolutely love it, Mr. Zabrowski. What book did you read? My best friend's Exorcism was very good. It's very humorous and well done. And it was written by a fellow named Grady Hendricks. And Grady Hendricks joins us now.

His new book is the Final Girl Support Group. So check that book out. Grady, thanks so much for being on the show. Dudes, thanks for having me. This is a huge honor for me. I have listened to this podcast for a long time and then stopped in 2020. I don't know what my problem is. I hate you clearly. I know it. That's what happens. Sometimes you have to no longer drive and you have to be in the comforts of your own

home and you realize it's not so fun to hear about home invasions and murder when you're actually in the place where most of those things happen. It's true. And you know, most deaths do happen in the home, don't they? Isn't that scary? That is really true. Actually, I'll start off straight up asking you about that. Because I think there's a lot of people that are very curious about the inner lives of horror writers. For every time I've met them, I think it's ever since The Shining, it's all what goes on inside that mind of yours. But I think a lot of times it's like when I've met like

a death metal person or like someone whose dress is all black for a job, they're normally just been like, yeah, I could tell you what my favorite Ralph's is, but that's like my most darkest secret. Yeah. I mean, I think the secret is horror writers have no interior lives. You know, we're just we're just we're just empty on the we're like mannequins. If we fall down real hard, we crack open and like just cockroaches run out. But no, to go back to what you were saying, though, metalheads are like I did a heavy metal horror book called We Sold Our Souls. I didn't know much about metal. And so I had to ask a lot of metalheads and they

are like the sweetest people ever. Like I have so many. I have so many like I've got one here, but there's a podcast so no visuals. But I have so many like playlists written down on like bar napkins and weird pieces of paper and sex shop receipts and stuff where people just like, oh, listen, you should listen to this and this and this and this and this and this. And you know, really nice dudes and bands are regional would invite you backstage. And I have to say, whenever you go backstage, after you see them perform on stage, I forget who the hell I saw in New York. They were so sweet. Oh, I'm such a bad friend and fan. But they were wearing masks on stage. They take it off backstage. It is like a NASCAR

drivers amount of sweat. It's like 20 pounds of sweat afterwards. They truly are just exhausted. And then they have to go do all the work of loading and unloading. I'm like, you all are just really aggressive truck drivers. Very sweet people. Well, and I also think being a metal player, musician player, what? I don't know. I like I like a metal player. It sounds like they're in like a Shakespeare troupe, but it's covered in Goat's blood. 80 years old. Whenever, you know, they have special job related injuries, too. Like the head, the head swirl, the hair swirl. Like that really, I was talking to a guy who knows in a band. He's in his 40s. He's like, it takes, he's like, I've got really bad vertebrae

in my neck. I got a chiropractor, all these people just on stage. I believe what's his name from Slayer. He can't head bang anymore because it's like legitimately they're like, his head will fall off. It's like some bullshit where it's one little piece of vertebrae holds his spine together. We all know now what their final show is going to be, right? He's just going to throw his head forward once flying to the audience. Good night, y'all. The final show of Slayer. My God, do all of your work require a lot of research? Like are you one of those authors that did? Do you have to put, do you do a lot of pre pro pre work before writing or are you jumping? Yeah. And that's sort of the reason I do it in the first place

because I'm a shy and retiring individual and it gives me an excuse to bother people and talk to them. I was a journalist for a while and I did a documentary about the Confederate flag a long time ago, which put me with two high school friends sort of on the road for four or five months. Just interviewing like people who had like Viking reenactors and also the Sun Poverty Law Center and Southern Neo secessionists. And we went to this great machine gun collector's convention in Nob Creek, Kentucky that I highly recommend it was much less racist and creepy than I thought it was going to be. Sure. People who have machine guns and like to shoot them, they would, they would put like cars and appliances

out on the range and put explosives in them and then shoot them and they would explode. And I mean, it kills the little boy and everyone. Absolutely. So you mentioned you were a journalist before, which I hear requires writing as well. Why did you switch from journalism to more of a fiction based writing? Were you just sort of like, I'm done dealing with, I'm just done dealing with people and now it's time to go off into my own world or was there a transition there? Cause I know it's all writing, but it's quite different. Well, I'm self-destructive in, in great strange and unfortunate ways. And so in 2008, before 2008, you could make a good living as a freelance journalist. Like, you know, people were just throwing, Hey,

we've got a website, right? For this. And I wrote for a bunch of variety, the village voice slate, ton of the usual suspects. And, and then in 2008, all that stopped and people stopped paying freelancers, especially doing cultural coverage, which is what I did, which basically means you watch a movie and shoot your mouth off about it. And it's like, isn't that what I am DBs for? So at that point, I thought what could be more of a dead end that I could just wedge my big melon head down. And I was like, Oh, fiction writing, that sounds like it has much fewer positive outcomes than journalism. So I just got all in and it literally took me from 2008 till probably 2016 to make again an income like

I had been making in pre 2008, which doesn't mean I was making that much money pre 2008. It means I was eating a lot of cat food between 2008 and 2016. Well you were also working your fricking ass off, not done that I did too much research here. This is simply Wikipedia, but you have occupy space in 2012. Satan loves you in 2012. Dirt candy, a cookbook in 2012. You got three books and then you just banged out like three more in 2013. Did you like, I guess you were just very invested that this was going to be your career because the tough thing about writing and Henry and I are two, we are just sluts for the laughs and the claps. You just do it alone. You just do it alone until the

book goes out and then you just have to hope that somebody reads it and unfortunately we're not exactly getting more literate. What is that like when you're like struggling and then you're like, I hope they like this. I feel like, I feel like a chronic masturbator on being interviewed by two people who have a lot of sex with other human beings and they're like, we really like being around people and like having a back and forth that you do it alone. What do you do? I must be really impressive. I would just get a tear for me. That poor, poor man. I don't know how lonely he is. I don't know how anyone finishes a term paper with porn hub right there. Like I would, I'm so ADD back when I still had a computer. You

know, it did. You didn't have access to all this stuff. It's the ultimate enemy to writing is masturbating. Unfortunately, you have to slay that monster. It's, you know, porn, I feel like was constructed to destroy freelancers. I really, which shows you what kind of a positive attitude I have towards sex. Like the only reason it exists is to keep me from doing my work, which is why I'm a chronic masturbator as we just found out clearly. Of course. Can I ask why were you or why horror comedy? Like was it a thing that you saw like a, like your influence could be or like, did you have ideas that were immediately like, I'm going to be writing horror. I'm going to be, I'm going to go into this world. Is it or was it baked

in or was it one of those been like, that's where the money is? Oh, you know how the money is always in horror comedy. Yeah. Horror comedy is one of those phrases you say and you watch agents, producers, editors, just sort of like this gag reflex. I just sort of wrote what I wrote and then people were kind of like, well, this is what you do. And I like to get along with people. So I was like, yes, you're right. That is what I do. But if honestly, if people had said these recipes for egg salad sandwich, this is what you do. I'd be like, yeah, I can write those. Like it just seemed to be the root of least resistance and what people were encouraging me to do. So I did. This is how serial killers happen, isn't it?

It was easy and people kept saying I was good at it. So I kept going. So my best friend's exorcism, that was the book that got you a little bit of cash. Is that correct? Is that when you sort of like flipped over from just sort of like struggling to like, I hope this shit works out to like, I think I got a career here. Well, actually the book before that, which was called Horror Store about a haunted Ikea and my publishers at the time at Quirk designed it to look like an Ikea catalog. It was a lot of fun to do. And what I didn't realize then is that Ikea is an international language. Everyone speaks Ikea. And I believe the language is pure and utter frustration. But so that book sold to all these foreign

countries and I was like, oh my God, 16 foreign kind of translated into Thai and South Korean and all this stuff. And then so best friend's exorcism came out and they sold like one foreign territory and I'm like, what the what? And they're like, there's no Ikea sign. No one cares about Southern exorcisms in Germany. They've got their own exorcisms. Yes, they do. And I think they're still working on it. Well, because if you don't know, the best friend's exorcism is like, essentially, it's beaches meets the exorcist. Like that's one way you can maybe simplify it as a tagline. But it's got a great emotional heart where it's I think that's the key, right? Where everybody says, oh, my agents, when I say

like, I've got this great thing, it's got 50 murders in it. They're like, I want a story. And I was like, no, I want as many or Nate murders as possible. The murders are the story. What do you mean? That's not good enough of a story. They don't understand. They don't get it. They don't understand their tiny little minds. They don't get it. But the idea of like having a real relationship at the center of this type of story of because it works with people, friendships growing up, because it's about like, I don't recognize my friend anymore, to the point where it extends to it's because there's a demon inside of her. It's such just because she got into ska and I can't go to the concerts. That's dark, man. You're

taking this real dark. I didn't know it was that kind of podcast. Yeah, he never said anything about ska music. Okay, that's a whole nother kind of horror. That's a whole nother genre. Yeah, well, you know, the thing with best friend's exorcism is I was pitching all these books to my editor is like a follow up to horror store because I was like, okay, okay, I got to do something else. We could have a haunting in a target. We could have a haunting in a Walmart. How about an Applebee's where a chicken tender goes crazy? And once I got through like every big box scenario I could think of, I started pitching out and like, like literally he was like, hmm, we're having dinner and he's like, hmm. Oh my God,

I hate that sounds so much. I hate it. He is a nice guy, but in general, but not that night. And and so I had this title, but I didn't have a book and I was like, my best friend's exorcism and he was like done sold. He's like great title. We can do something with that. I was like, wait, so then I was sort of like, well, I'd already done horror store, right? And I mean, you know, we were all under the delusion that my good writing sold it to all these foreign countries when it was really just the fact that everyone knows Ikea. So then I sort of like wrote up a pitch for him and everything. And he's like, okay, yeah, we can we can do this. And and I wrote a first draft of the book that

I was like, this is so sweet, man. This is like, I just rolled around on those pages. And I gave it to my wife to read because that's what I do because I wanted her to think I was awesome. And she waited until we were on a subway. And she was like, this this book's pretty hot garbage. And I was like, it's nice that she waited until you are in a moving form of transportation, just in case you wanted to jump off or, you know, in your life in any way. Yeah, exactly. Well, and it gave me an opportunity to have like a teeny tiny man tantrum where I actually stormed off one door of the subway, we were at a station and then like was like, oh, shit, and storm back in like the middle door, just to make

sure I was on the train. We were on the way to a party, I think. And back when people did such things, 1612. And and I realized, though, that she was right that like, I had just grabbed a ton of cliches and kind of BS from like, John Hughes movies. And we've all seen because I had set the book in 88 because I had to set it in high school because that's when friendships are strongest. And those are the friendships to write about. But my high school was 80. I don't know what high school is now. It all smells like, you know, vaping and the kids have cell phones and they do like active shooter drills. I don't know what that's like. I know. No. But so 88, I know that was my 10th grade. That's

the year. So I was like, OK, so I like she gave me all her letters and I had all my letters from then and she had her like journals. I had my like old shitty diaries. And I just read that stuff for like two weeks. Dude, OK, how traumatizing was that? There is no way I could do that. It was like shooting myself in the face over and over again. Oh my God. What was something that did you did it take you back there? Did it did you like remember the thing is is it took me about two weeks before it kind of and I mean, there was great stuff in there. You know, I mean, friends write each other like, hey, yeah, my boyfriend's in protective custody again. I don't know. I don't think this is going

to work out. If you heard the New Guns N' Roses album, it is sweet. You know, that kind of stuff, like real deep conversations we were having and not my boyfriend, by the way, friend's boyfriend. And and so then I remembered like I just started remembering like, oh, this is what it was like to sit on the quad having lunch. And the thing I remembered that I just forgotten about high school is just how scared I was all the time about like absolutely everything. Like I had terrible acne in high school and every morning I had to look in the mirror and be like this fucking monster face has to go. It's so brutal, man. The fact that most the fact that kids get through it all, dude, it's so frickin brutal. I know.

And I also was like everything like like sandwiches, like how am I going to eat this? Is it the kind of sandwich other people have? Like, okay, I'm going to eat the whole like it was just like overthinking everything because you wanted to reassure yourself you were a normal person, but you didn't know what that was because no one's a normal person. So you're looking at other people. And on the one hand, we make that this sort of funny, like, ha, ha, ha, isn't peer pressure funny? On the other hand, it was really, really life and death. And it didn't help that every day some adult would turn to you and be like, you could ruin the rest of your life by the decision you make in the next 45 minutes. You'd be

like, oh my God, I'm in 10th grade. This is so much pressure. But I also remember feeling friends. I remember watching friends turn into other people. Like also that time period too, where you're when you're traveling from 15 to 18, like I have friends that just became like they just showed up with green hair. They're like, we're going to take over the school with shotguns. And I was like, what are you talking about? Then Columbine happened that talk all deescalated. Yeah, it seemed to be in there. It was like because that was that time period where it was kind of in the air, this like angst kind of feeling where you all of a sudden you don't recognize your best friend anymore. And you're like, when

did I did I change or do they change? Oh, yeah. And it would be like every summer, you know, you'd get a new season of your friend and it'd be like, what have the writers room done this season? Like they've taken him dark. Oh, now he's on the romcom. Like with a girl you like it was all and the worst would be when your friends would change like in front of your eyes. Like you'd all be at a sleepover or something. And then everyone decided they they hated you or like they were all into something you weren't. Bro, you are given your trigger and some PTSD, dude. I don't know about all this. So is that where is that where the idea like the the transition that happens in the teenage years and possession

and all of those things, those sort of intertwine is that is that sort of the idea? Yeah. Yeah. And also just like, you know, I got in trouble a lot in high school. Like, I mean, I was suspended a few times and, you know, and it was like, I didn't do it on purpose. Like I was just doing what I thought were the right things and they turned out to be the wrong things. And the harder I would try to fix them, the worse I would make them. Yeah. And it was just and at a certain point you're just like, fuck it and just, you know, whatever. And so it was just sort of that feeling of like, no matter what you do, you're screwing it up. I mean, you really do feel like and especially if you're a boy and I would imagine

especially now post Columbine when people are very worried about like boys being violent and all that stuff just must be bizarre and terrifying. You're told you're sort of a walking time bomb, you know, and it's like, am I? I guess maybe. Well, it depends what you had for lunch and if it sells various take Thursday, you're definitely a walking time bomb and those baths are horrible. But also, you know, they don't need the especially with the advent of social media. Can you imagine doing all of the things you're talking about? And then also you're not just in competition with like your high school. It's like you're in you're in competition with the with the lifestyles of people across the world. The globe. What

is normal? Yeah. And I love. Have you watched any of these videos for like, and they're mostly watched by high school kids. I caught some relatives whose name I won't mention watching them. They're very young and they're those dudes who sort of optimize their lives and they're like, here's how you walk like a confident person. You know, you need a good timepiece like this. Oh, my God, they're amazing. An immense amount of pressure and an immense amount of money being made off of those kids feeling the pressure to get that timepiece. Oh, it comes to you. I mean, you know, it's interesting because I never journaled. Did you journal in high school, Henry? I think you did journal. I did not. I little I wrote

poetry and stuff like that. And I wrote plays and stuff like that. But I wasn't I wasn't invested in my own thoughts because I couldn't stand them. Did you feel like, I mean, just looking back at your journal in hindsight, being that you sort of, you know, wrote down what was happening in your life, did I mean, journalism, I guess that's the perfect extension of somebody who has a diary or has a journal. Well, the difference is journalism, even if it's cultural coverage serves some useful purpose. High school journals or at least mine are totally useless because they're all about your feelings. And there is nothing less comprehensible or interesting to read 10, 15, 20 years after the fact than the abstract,

you know, mouth cloud of some 14 year old version of use feelings. Like, I mean, I'd be like, where was I writing this? What was I doing? What grade was I in to be like, you know, sometimes these negative things pierce the veil. And then it's like a crystal knife of Claire said, what am I doing? That's hot garbage. That is hot. Tell me, tell Grady, Junior, tell me what grade you're in. What state are you in? In the rain before my eyes. No one understands. It was just give me some information. I want some information. Grady context. Yeah, that's what's going on. The one really cool thing that did come out of this though, I got to say is, have you guys heard of deliverance ministries? I, the what

you it's in the book, right? It's also the people. Okay, okay. People are ripping. We talk about like the power guys. I think guys are like ripped. Oh, yes. Of course I know that my group. Yes, yes. Yeah, but deliverance is also it's basically the Protestant version of an exorcism because, you know, exorcisms are Catholic, but the Protestants got it too. And they are amazing. I mean, there was a church that briefly many years ago and I was writing this book had a picture, like a quick video, a snippet of a puke and rebuke session they did, which was like a mass kind of deliverance for a lot of people, but they have like a snack table in the back and kids running around and the helpers who had the garbage cans for

people to puke in were a little like a safety vest to walk. It was like the most orderly thing. And people were getting rid of like, you know, the spirit of pornography addiction or the spirit of financial insecurity, like the demon of like, of, of, of binging. And it was really, I was like, wow, that makes so much sense. Like the exorcism is sort of a self-help. Well, like, Grady, I would have to infer by that that you grew up in a religious home because I certainly did as well. Or if you did or not, but yeah, how did that

Presbyterian though, like tend to mostly form committees. Yeah, there are committee people. We were evangelical, but talk about a perfect gateway to the macabre, to horror. And then obviously innately, you're going to find humor in it because everything you have to laugh at everything because it's all so ridiculous. Did that, did that sort of understanding of religion sort of seed some of your ideas going forward when it comes to exorcisms and demons and spirits and all that stuff? Sure. Because you're stuck in church and you can't read anything except the Bible, just in the pew in front of you. And the only interesting book is Revelation. So, you know,

you just spend a lot of time with the seven-headed beast. It's because that's the funnest part. That's the funnest part of the Bible. You just didn't know that there's so much fucking in it. If you could get to the fucking chapters, you'd understand they're worse fucking chapters, but no one's telling you about them. You got to find those on your own. I also wonder though, like there has to be like a project in LA where someone's like, we're adapting the book of revelations, boom, blew your mind, mic drop, pitch over, like it's going to be directed by Mel Gibson. It's going to be like, I don't trust Hollywood.

I don't think Hollywood could handle revelations. They tried to, but then it's so hard because it's technically just, when we did an episode on revelations, we were talking about it's just essentially a sketch. It's like a political comedy sketch. Like they're making fun of like it. That's all it is, it's very. Yeah. And it's like the times they do it, you know, it's the rapture, the left behind movie series or the mega do the Armageddon, the Omega code, which is none of them are as good as you want them to be. But then you revelations, like you said, it is sort of like, it's like, I don't know if you remember splitting image, that British puppet sketch

show from the 80s, where it was all these grotesque puppets that were like parodies of people. Yes. That's the same one that the Phil Collins video, those, those weird puppets were in a fucking long time. The confusion, I think was the song. Can I ask you about paperbacks from hell? You put this compilation together. I am one of those people that was a child that because, you know, my family always had those like 1980s horror books, because that was like the other big boom, I think of horror fiction was like when Stephen King was at his absolute peak

and there was just so many people and I picked up this book and I had it this J. M. Williamson. This is the brother kind, right, which is great. And then when I saw paperbacks from hell come out and this is like in that immediately, I was like, oh, this is such a great collection of like books that just get you by the cover where you just buy. I bought this book simply because I thought the cover was cool. I didn't even give a shit was inside of it. And then you realize, oh, that's what they were doing for a decade was just selling us with cool covers. Did you actually try to read Brotherkind?

Yes. Stephen Williamson, who wrote Brotherkind is one of those authors who's just like, he's just slapping words together. He's got to hit his word count. But that book out of all of his books where it's about like a psychic investigator and there's a UFO just flying around full of grays and they're abducting human women and like gang raping them. I'm sorry to be so unsavory. And then they like, because they want to breed a half human, half alien hybrid baby, but the aliens are sort of wimps. So they bring big foot in who's like rides around with them as they're finishing move. And this psychic investigator like tracks

them down, gets on their UFO and big, they seek big foot on them. And he just destroys big foot because he's like, I refuse to believe in you. And big foot's like, no. And then the aliens are like, yes, but we are more intellectual than big foot. How will you defeat us human? And he has a transistor radio and the UFO is in stealth mode. I think it's over Detroit, maybe Chicago. And he turns it on to an acid jazz station as he describes it. And it plays kisses firehouse. And aliens like, what is this noise and their heads explode. That is a hell of a way out. Well, that brings up a good question. How do you end the book? Look at this. I will get it. Always exploding. Yeah. But I look at the front of this cover.

It's got quotes from Jacques Valais, who we talk about on top with a famous ufologist also apro. This is all like ufologist quotes that the very front of this book, they're all just been like, what a creative use of theory. Each one's been like, oh, wow. And you wonder if they read it or they were just friends with Williamson and they're like, we're going to be in a book. Awesome. A lot of times I think you're like, you asking me for a quote on it. That's incredible. Also, there is a quote from the author itself on the inside of the book commenting about how great their own book is. I missed that. Jay and Williamson blurbed his own book. Oh, my God, that's beautiful. Well, you know what

it sounds like though, weirdly, are you aware of like, do you've ever anything read about John Keele? Like, it sounds like what they did, which is honestly what I'm trying to figure out how to do is like, they wrote an action horror movie about John Keele. Yeah, well, I mean, why would pan theories? I mean, honestly, look at him. I have him above me. He sits above me and he stares down on me and he does nothing. But I don't think just raise my cholesterol. I believe the cholesterol needs to be lowered, Henry. The other one I want to recommend though that I read with paperbacks from hell is there's a book by John Coyne called The Searing That's About the Eye of Ball, I think, but it's an alien that comes in. It's like one

of those ancient aliens, you know, the ancient astronaut stuff. But this one gets angry that humans are onto it. And so like, it's it's observatory is like a Native American man burial mound observatory outside Washington, DC in a Richmond suburb, I think. And so when people get too close to its secret, it makes the women have orgasms that are so powerful that literally their minds begin to deteriorate and brain matter starts to stream out of their nostrils. That's fantastic. I mean, it's so beautiful. So when you're reading a book like that, obviously, you can't copy and paste. But for inspiration, you must find some kind of like themes or do you what do you look for when reading a book when you're trying

to find inspired when you're trying to find inspiration for what you're working on? Is it themes or is it like, you know, whatever, Sasquatch going to space? Is there something that you're trying to like, you know, find for yourself so that you can do your work? Well, reading the paperbacks from hell stuff. I mean, you know, it's funny. I was going to write another book for my publisher and they're like, you know, you write these things about these paperbacks, you should do you should pitch us a book of them like we probably won't buy it, but that'd be kind of fun. I was like, yeah, sure. And I had to fit in this really narrow publication. So I had 10 months basically to write this book. And

I hadn't read enough of the paperback. So I read something like, I think it was like between 250 and 300 of these books. What? Low. And how long, how long did that take you? Well, I got to the point. I mean, three a day was average. Three a day? We have to end this. I can't talk to you. Three books a day. In my, it was hard. It was hard. It made for a lot of marital trouble because my wife's

a chef and so she'd leave in the morning to go to work and I'd be on the couch reading paperbacks. And she'd come home at night with like burns and cuts covered in like physical labor. And I'm like, my fingertips hurt from turning pages. I'm sorry. I didn't do the dishes today. I was preoccupied with this book about sasquatch. Oh my God. You're lucky you didn't write a book about your wife murdering you and making it an autobiography. She probably did. And this is all just that split second of that. My whole life since

I've been living in that split second. It's a hallucination. She's like, right now my wife is on top of me. Crouching. I just sawing my head off and cheering and pulling for her. Reading is not a job. Reading is not a job. But so when I read those books, it's a really different mindset. Like I still do. I mean, I was just reading a bunch of telephone horror novels that got written in the 80s when people are like bell system. What's inside that? What could someone do? They can get inside your house and melt your brain. People melt minds a lot in these books. But so I go into

this different mindset where I'm like, I've read so many of them. I'm like, I can go pretty fast because I know what landmarks to look for. Like, here's the sympathetic police detective. Here's the child who's going to be in there. Here's the love interest. Here's the awkward love scene. So I don't get any inspiration for those books. I just become this weird receptacle for whatever insanity they're sort of firehosing into my eyeballs in that moment. You don't think that that affects your future writing and all like, is it one of those where now that you have this like, it is just a just a depository of essentially pulp. Right. And then your publisher is just like, you just wrote Stephen King's it. You just

wrote it again. Yeah. Well, you know, I wish that was true. It's kind of like there's a Japanese filmmaker who had a really terrible motorcycle accident and he's like, but I hope maybe I'll become a great piano player with this traumatic brain injury, but it didn't happen. It's something would happen. And it just made me a sad person. Oh, I think my problem is, you know, I worked for a long time before I started doing like journalism stuff for a parapsychological research lab. And really? And so, yeah. And so when it came time to write horror store, like my editor was all into it. And I turned in the

first draft and I was like, I was like, I've got to get ghosts right. You know, I am the guy who knows what hauntings and ghosts are actually like my editor was like, so this is a little sleepy and kind of boring. Like, can you maybe spice it up some because you're boring. Oh, no, I'm trying to write a script about what men in black are really like, like I'm trying to write that script like that sort of that version of it. They're by nature very boring. I tried to pitch it to my age. I tried to describe this and they're like, what is an ultra terrestrial? So can they be shot with a gun? Like it was like, I think I was like, no, no, there's no fighting in this. And they're like, that's not good. That's

like, no one likes this. Yeah, they ascend to a mind level and have mental combat. Because so like, oh, because you're telling me, Henry, in that scene, it's going to be two people staring at each other going like, and I was like, yes, but think of the tension. Absolutely. You know, it's so interesting. Now I want to talk about parapsychology as well. But so how was that experience? How long did you work in parapsychology and what years? Because I know that has advanced and changed quite a bit as technologies evolved. Well, and also a lot of it sort of blended over with consciousness research now. Sure. And but yeah, so I worked for this place. I just answered a craigslist at us. All good adventures begin.

I answered the craigslist that led me to a townhouse. And it was just one in an office manager. And so I worked for these guys. It was a place that had been founded by William James back in like 1885. And they had this this office and sort of a townhouse on the Upper West Side. And they just needed someone to answer the phone. So I was kind of their office manager for about four years from, I would say, 98, 98, late 98. What were those? What were those calls like when they called in? Was it like Ghostbusters? Well, yeah, I mean, this is actually the place, I mean, that Dan Ackroy had been a member of and sort of like the original draft of Ghostbusters. It was super serious about parapsychology.

Yeah, yeah, kind of based on it. Is that like the Theosophical Society? Like, is it the kind of same group? Yeah, well, it's called the American Society for Psychical Research. And they were they were really interesting. My boss was a really, really smart woman. And she said, you know, my first day at work, she's like, we're going to get a lot of calls. We had phone books back then. You know, she's like, you know, we're in all the phone books and people are going to call in and they're going to tell you a lot of stuff and do not validate anything they say, because for all you know, they're off their meds, they're messing with you. They are, you know, they have a history of doing this. You don't know.

And she's like, on the other hand, don't invalidate anything they say, because what do you know? You're the office manager, you're 20 something years old, maybe there are ghosts. You have no idea. So you want me to not validate and validate. Thank you for such a clear objective. I always feel like a person who did that best was Art Bell and coast to coast they am. Oh yeah, so good at like asking a leading question and go like, I see like acting as if he is an impartial judge. He's willing to hear your side of the story, but he doesn't have a stake in this game. No, he's just a man that pervades this information to an audience. Exactly. And so basically what it did is it made me do something that doesn't come naturally maybe

because I'm just a horrible person or maybe because I'm a dude, I don't know. But I just listened. Like most of the calls were from people, you know, where's my journal? This is late. I paid this where you don't guys didn't renew my membership. Do you want more printer toner? But occasionally there'd be people like, look, there's a psychic energy vampire living upstairs and it's really messing with my family. And I would just listen. And a lot of times, you know, and sometimes there'd be a journal article, I knew that I could send them. Well, this is about there. But like it was really fascinating. And we had a great archive that I spent a lot of time sort of helping them digitize. And so reading

these letters and and one of their fear, one of their sort of guiding principles all the way back to when they were founded is we probably don't have the tools to study this stuff right now the way it should be. But we will keep a record of your experience because down the road, this data will be possibly useful to someone. So it's great accounts of this stuff going all the way back. And, you know, I don't know what I came away from it with, except to really realize that that the feeling of being haunted and seeing a ghost or something is a really human thing. I mean, it seems absolutely hell of a lot of people. And it is deeply, deeply profound to them. And it is really boring when they try to describe

it. Yeah, I absolutely I've had some friends that talk about changing overnight after a spiritual moment. Yeah, for them that was life changing. And for me, it seemed like a mistake in something. But whatever, I've also had friends that come into people who are like, I feel something in this room. Yeah. And you're just being like, you're just smoking weed and you're being like, I do too. But I think it's because that we just smoked a massive joint together. And so that's why you're feeling what you feel. I call that just general paranoia. Well, exactly. And it's also there's the thing where it's like, you know, someone tells me they saw their grandmother standing next to their child six

years after their grandmother was dead. For them, that's this profound moving connection to this person. Try putting that in a movie. This is the big climax. What does she do? She stands there and she looks at them. Is there eye contact? Possibly not. But for the person experiencing it, it's this really big moment. So it's like, it's, it's, I realized that that experience was really interesting. But in terms of writing horror, totally. I had to like get it out of my brain and write horror. Then the grandmother pulls her head off and throws it at her and it eats a skin off. That's a good book. That's a good book. It's interesting. We were, we just didn't, we had a conversation with, with some folks

recently about like new technology. Now things have changed and we sort of all believe like things haven't really changed. Podcasts are simply radio. YouTube is simply television spot. You know, all of these things are, are all just extensions of, of, of previous realities. When it comes to, as you were talking about with the book about like the bell, you know, radio or phone company being like, is it haunted? All that stuff. What sort of transitions have you seen now that we're in 2021? And again, you have a new book out, the final girl support group. Check that out. The final girl support group, Grady Hendricks. How is horror sort of stayed the same, but also adapted to the new technology? Because now it's like

that fantastic movie, uh, friend, host, host is the only movie I ever want to see a fucking zoom call in ever. There's never needs to be a zoom call ever put in a piece of media. Henry is over zoom. I think all of us are over zoom. I agree with that. But as, how do you incorporate new tech, but with basically old ideas, which is like, this shit can be kind of scary. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's face it, like cell phones really through horror movies for a loop, right? How do they, how do they, how do they get rid of the cell phone? We have to find a way for them to lose their cell phones. That's the first fact. There's no signal. There's no signal. Yes. That was like the weird like birthing pain of every

movie, someone holding their phone in the air and waving or do you have any bars? Um, but it was, you know, but it's like, it's so, I feel like we're a little past that now. Like now we're just like, Oh, set it in 1980. The 80s are cool again. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. That's what it follows. Did so well where they had phones, but they didn't have phones. I don't know what it was set in. What, whatever those were, the little clam shells. Yeah. I always assumed there was just a dancing ballerina in there. They were looking at, um, Could be poly pocket or something. The thing about horror that I think makes it different

from every other genre and makes it really sort of technology vulnerable in a way is it horrors the only genre that's supposed to be true. Like it's the only one we're all the way back to the beginning. It's like, this really happened. And his name was Dracula. Like, you know, the book is like done like the, it's all this, you know, found diary excerpts, letters, cables, like all this stuff, you know, Mina Harker is using a dictaphone early dictaphone, like, you know, cause it's contemporary and up to date. The very first Gothic novel, Castle of Otranto is like, these are letters found in a family's crypt. Like it's always someone telling this true story. And you know, then you, like the exorcist,

you know, they did a whole thing when that movie was getting made that was like, there were fires on the set who started them. There was a curse on this film and you know, all that kind of stuff. And, um, I feel like, you know, then you get in your Blair witch projects and your found footage stuff. And horror is just always claiming that it happens on creepy pasta, all that stuff. It's just always claiming it happened to someone, you know, think of how much serial killer fiction really hump the leg of the behavioral sciences unit. Right. It was like, it does all this stuff. Like, yes, this is exactly how it would happen. And look, we've put in the name of a real behavioral scientist from the FBI.

And so I feel like horror because of that has to stay up to date. Is that also ground the work? So then when something does happen, that's extreme. That's what I thought. Um, oh my goodness, I'm totally blank. You know, hereditary. That's what I thought hereditary did so well because the very beginning until, you know, the mid until the first drama and then all of a sudden it goes 110 miles an hour. And you're like, yes, that was my favorite part. How do you, and we don't have that much more time here, but again, thank you so much for being here. Grady Hendricks, the final girl support group. I guess we should talk about

that, but let's talk about how I love to talk about that because I'm going to read whatever you, whatever you're slaying in. Yeah, let's put it in my eyeballs. I appreciate it reader with no discrimination or sense of self-preservation. Yeah. So the final support group, I guess, you know, we can sort of use that as an extension of that question where it's like, how do you ground the work? And then how do you, you know, bring it up into another world where it becomes macabre? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's like you were saying though, it's like kind of the

idea that there's nothing really new. Maybe you aren't saying, I'm putting more, it's kind of like you were saying that say, Hey, I love it. Whatever. That's, I will. Yes. And that, but like, whatever you think is smart. Yes. No, but this idea that like, how do you make it new? And I think people do get hung up on the technology and the techniques and all that. But really what you have to do is you just have to connect with that emotional stuff. Again, like you were just saying about hereditary. Like if that hadn't been a drama, like I usually don't care when someone turns into a special

effect and saws their head off, but I really cared when Francis McDermott did it. Absolutely. You know, I was like, what a waste of a talented artist. Yeah, exactly. And, and, and also what kind of job did Gabriel Byrne have? Like, I love that he was one of those movie psychologists who's like, they just have a glass of Scotch and look out a rainy window sitting in front of a computer using. He thinks, he thinks he ruminates and he might have a client, but mostly I think he drinks Scotch.

Yeah. And if I was married to Gabriel Byrne, that's exactly what I would be like, we've made a nest for you in this room. It's got a comfy chair and then Scotch and you just come to the door and you look at him like a giant panda from time to time. But, but, you know, with the final girl thing, final girls have been around. I mean, there's a final girls movie. There's, you know, screen queens. There isn't a season of American horror story. And what always kind of irritated me. Can you trash other? Sure. Why not? What always irritated me about them was that they treated it as a joke. Like, oh, this kind of campy, ridiculous thing. And I was always like, wait a minute, like this woman just

went through this horrible, like not only did all her friends get killed, like, like as if it was an active shooter situation, but the dude was dressed up like, you know, with a hockey mask, like that's just really creepy. Like she's never going to go like, she's never going to date a Canadian after that. Like, you know, and it's, but it's like, you just are like, that's horrible. And what happens when this horrible thing happens to you when you're 16 or 17 and you kind of live the rest of your life and it's shadow? Like, what do you do? How do you put your life back together? And one of the things that was really interesting is, and so the book is about a support group for final girls. Oh my God,

it's right there in the title. And it's sort of 20 years on and their franchises have gone because all the franchises are based on these real crimes and sort of extrapolate from there. And these women are older now, they're middle age and half of them are like, what are we doing? Why are we obsessed with this stuff from our childhood? And there's a few who've gone survivalist and others who become substance abusers. And then someone starts to kill them one by one. And it's kind of like, oh, we've got to get our shit together. But I really wanted to sort of talk about like, how you live through the worst thing that ever happens to you. Because that's always my favorite thing in a horror movie is like, what happens

later? Like, how do you live through the worst thing that ever happened to you and keep going? Like, Well, that's why I mean, it's much cornier, but the later saw movies where they all get together and they support each other. And then they actually think jigsaw for torturing them because then it was the first time they felt alive. And it's like, okay, whatever. But it's a great premise. Oh, it's gonna want to ask a horror mechanics question of like, how do you build a new, like quote unquote iconic slasher? Like, how do you go about building a Jason or a Freddie?

You shamelessly steal from the ones that exist. And as they shamelessly stole before. Yeah. And, and, you know, one of the things though that was, well, two things actually. So one of the things that was interesting is Adrian King who plays Alice Hardy and Friday the 13th part one, the final girl. And then she's the beginning of part two, actually sent it to her. I knew some mutual friends who knew her. I sent it to her to get a blurb. And she loved the book. And she and I have talked a few times. And she was talking about like, you know, she had this stalker around the time she was between Friday one and two, and it really wrecked her life. And she was doing

things that these women in this book do like she could only take a shower when she had a padlock on the bathroom door on the other because she was so she felt so exposed and vulnerable and terrified. And you know, that's not I mean, I think for a lot of people, that's not a unique experience, but for a lot of women, I don't think that's a unique experience to kind of feel like, you know, you are a soft object in a world full of sharp knives. And like the smallest accident and you are you're you're done. Yeah, no one is busting in to see me in the shower as I lather myself with with Irish Sprite. No one really cares. You wait because whatever is coming

feeling. Yeah. But then the other thing is it's it's interesting, a friend of mine is an agent, a book agent, they do children's books mostly. And they were wrapping a children's book that takes place during an active shooter drill. And I was like, and they were having a hard time, you know, placing that for obvious reasons. But the author of it was saying that the reason she wrote it is because her daughter woke her up in the middle of the night is like, mom, there's a man in the house with a gun. And she started to ask other parents and they were like, yeah. And it's like kids who are growing up now that that slow moving guy with

a weapon who's walking through the camp or the high school or the sorority house or whatever. He's back. You know what I mean? And he's in everyone's nightmares. And it's that guy, that guy who's in your house. And he's going from room to room. I mean, you know, Halloween says it best. It's the boogeyman. He just, you know, changes changes, you know, accessories. I really blew my mind when I wonder if we'll we'll see the same kind of horror boom because I remember reading Stephen King's dance macabre and he was talking about how the the fear of the bomb, like the cold war, like made a lot of people like get deep into horror. And I wonder if there is something like that also happening now where in America, you know,

when we've traveled abroad, everybody literally asked you as an American, we've had several like not ironic people being like, where's your gun? Like how do where do you keep your gun? Really? When you travel? Like Mike, like it's a dog that I need a gun and sitter. You know what I mean? They're like, they say leashes for guns. We got to start selling leashes for guns. Walk your gun today. This is a new era between mass shootings and plague shit. We're already living in a massive horror scenario that with all of this. And when this plague is done, I promise you 2022, I think that you're right, Henry. And then Mr. Grady, I think we're going to have a massive horror boom once again. And that boom should begin with

you. Just deeply. But of course, the reason the reason that horror exists is to exterminate that trauma, right? You face it and you beat it. That's why I love the final girls. That's why they're always the heroines. And horror deserves a little bit. Well, I don't know if it gets enough credit for how it shows really strong women. And I think that's fucking badass. The final girl support group. Get this book out by Grady Hendricks. Get that book and get every single book that Grady has ever written because you are one of those goddamn books. Twice, twice, please. Give them to the give them out on the highway. I think it's important to get because you don't know how many people have been reading. I read while

I drive sometimes. No, I think I'm just one of those people. You know, I mean, it does help you drive. It helps your driving experience. All right. Well, I mean, you really have to focus that much once you're on the highway. You prop the book against the wheel. You're fine. Okay. Now that we have just set up the first car accident in the history of books, the final support group, check this book out. Read it while driving. All right. There was our conversation with Grady Hendricks. Check out those books. He's great. He is so great. So funny. And so, and I love his material too. His books are so good. Legitimately get whatever he is writing. It's at least entertaining. It's absolutely. So thank you all so much

for listening and thank you all so much for supporting us. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. We'll talk to you all soon.