Stuff You Should Know - Is the Necronomicon real?

Episode Date: August 20, 2009

H.P. Lovecraft's strange, elaborate stories and mythologies have inspired a devoted following. Join Josh and Chuck -- and a special guest -- as they discuss Lovecraft's most famous creation, the "Necronomicon," in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Start your journey at toyota.com slash let's go places. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from howstuffworks.com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. We just ticked off every HP Lovecraft fan there is

with that. That was so cheesy. This is Stuff You Should Know. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Bryant. And who else is in here? I was going to wait a minute. Oh, okay.

I was going to lead up to that. Well, there's no one else in here. No, no one. Today, we are doing a special podcast on the Necronomicon. And for those of you who don't know what the Necronomicon is, it is arguably the most famous fictional text ever created in the history of American literature. It is an evil book, one might say, created by probably

my favorite author, HP Lovecraft. Yeah, I didn't realize this. You told me this. I didn't know. I love Lovecraft. My favorite stories are Dreams in the Witch House, where he basically equates physics to witchcraft, like witches have an advanced grasp on physics.

Really? It's awesome. It's so cool. I'm going to read some of the stuff. Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward is probably the greatest one he's ever written. It's amazing. Really?

Yeah, you've got to read that. And these are short stories, novellas? Well, the next one's a novella at the Mountains of Madness. That's an excellent story. I've heard them. And actually, that one kind of factors into what we're going to be talking about today. I don't know if the Necronomicon makes an appearance,

but what the Necronomicon deals with is all over the place there. So Chuck, despite my love of Lovecraft, it's painfully obvious to both of us that we're mere fleas compared to some other people out there who are Lovecraft fans. The dogs. And we figured that we were going to get nothing, but angry emails for this one.

And they take it pretty seriously, I would imagine. They don't want us to poop on their hero and their icon. No, and he's my hero too, but I just I don't. I can't do it justice. No, I can't. So instead, we decided to bring in who will call the shield, who can take all of the angry emails. And that is our friend, colleague, and fellow podcaster

Jonathan Strickland. Paramore? Yes, we have a special guest today. Chuck wasn't lying. I was. Yes. Hey, Strick, how's it going? Hey there, guys.

Going pretty well. Thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed writing both Cthulhu and the Necronomicon articles, so I'm sure to be here. Very, very cool. Well, you're kind of raised on these, weren't you? Doesn't your dad write weird fiction? Yeah.

My father's name's Brad Strickland, so if you were to do a search for that on Amazon, you would see that he's written quite a few novels, several which fall into the horror or weird fiction category. So yeah, I grew up around this stuff. This was your life. It's pretty cool. And your dad predicted Teddy Ruxpin.

That's true, but has nothing to do with Lovecraft or Cthulhu or the Necronomicon. Right. No, it doesn't. My parents were T school teachers. So not nearly as exciting. My dad was a mechanical engineer. I didn't grow up with a Cthulhu and strange beast that

would drive you insane just to look upon its face. Right. Yeah, yeah. Lesson plans. Which is something that's a point that you make in the articles you wrote, Strick, was that these creatures that the Necronomicon deals with, they'll drive you crazy just by looking at them or by interacting with them.

Usually terrible, terrible things happen, right? And at the center of the Necronomicon is Cthulhu, Cthulhu. Or there's a pronunciation that Lovecraft wrote in a letter to a fellow author, right? Yes. And how is that one pronounced? You know, why are you hitting me with that all of a sudden? OK, let's be clear here.

Lovecraft actually makes a point to say that these otherworldly creatures have their own language, which humans are incapable of repeating. I love that, because that makes it very mysterious and creepy to me. Yeah, it's the same sort of nature as they have this appearance that we cannot comprehend. If we were to look upon it as you say, we would go crazy. So it actually takes a lot of pressure off,

because you can name things whatever you like. You can put as many consonants and little apostrophes in there, and so you can call it whatever you like. And when people say how do you pronounce it, you just respond, you can't. But Cthulhu is one that I think most Lovecraft scholars would argue is the appropriate pronunciation. But the way I've always said it and the way that most of the fans

that I've talked to have always said it is Cthulhu. Right, wasn't there a rumor early on that the Cloverfield movie was the monster was the Cthulhu? Yeah, that was very early on when that preview first hit, and there was not even a title for the movie yet. In fact, there was no title internally for the movie. People could only get little glimpses of what was going on, and a lot of people said, hey, maybe this

is the Cthulhu movie we've all been waiting for. This is actually the monster. I wonder why I haven't made that yet. I think, well, there have been several movies that have tried to tap into the Lovecraft universe, and only a few have been really successful. I think part of the problem is that how do you portray a monster that is so horrible that you'd

go crazy looking at it? That was what I was thinking was it's probably pretty intimidating for a filmmaker to try and tackle this. Well, there are descriptions of Cthulhu, right? So he basically has wings. He resembles. You're saying he?

Just by looking at this. Yeah, think about this. I just figured with Lovecraft. Do you think feminine when you hear this? Wings, huge leathery wings. Yes. Part octopus. Yes.

Part dragon. Woman. Part man. No, I wouldn't say I just seems like with Lovecraft this thing, he would say it is a gender that cannot be defined. Yeah, I would agree. Unnameable. OK.

So we'll call him he. OK, so we will call Cthulhu he. OK, so Cthulhu, and the whole reason we're talking about him, is he figures at the center of the Cthulhu mythos that Lovecraft created during the course of his writing in Strickland. When was he most prolific?

It was during the 20s? Yeah, we're talking about just right around that era, late 20s, pretty much. What's really interesting to me is that Cthulhu became the center figure of this mythos. But it's not the creature that Lovecraft wrote about the most. Cthulhu really only factors into a couple of stories. And in fact, is described in some as being a priest kind

of figure for the old ones, which is this race of creatures Lovecraft created. Yeah, but he never said whether he was a priest that led the worship of the old ones, or whether he was the priest to the old ones. That's correct. So that's, you know. I'm just going to leave the room.

You guys are nerding out. Well, the point I'm trying to make here is that it's really the fans of Lovecraft who kind of latched on to Cthulhu and made it the central figure of his mythology. If you were to read all the stories, you would say, why? I mean, it is a very striking kind of image. But why this over any other particular, like why not a Shabbath?

Is there a reason for that? I think it's mainly because when you do read the descriptions, they are very compelling. And I think that it's also probably one of the ones that's easier to imagine than some of the other. A lot of the other ones end up being shapeless. Well, that's kind of hard to imagine.

That's not fine. Or a mindless cosmic being who rules at the center of chaos. That's kind of difficult to conceive of. Yeah, I think so. It's very hard to make a plush toy of that. Right. A Furby.

I think the other reason that Cthulhu has become such a prominent figure in Lovecraftian lore is that he's still here on Earth. He was one of the rulers of Earth along with the great old ones, right? That's correct. And then he had a city that was called Riliye. Actually, still is.

That sunk under the waters. And what's interesting is that, depending on which story you're reading, you can kind of locate where Riliye is. It's off the coast of South America. And there have been some interesting weird things that have gone on in that general area that people jokingly attribute to Cthulhu saying, hey,

it's Cthulhu snoring. Right. Like in 1997, I know you put a little sidebar that was pretty interesting, that they detected with underwater microphones what a very loud, loud, low, repeating sound somewhere out in the middle of the ocean out there. Right.

And that they said, oh, well, that's just a whale song. But then marine biologists came in and say, oh, that's not a whale unless that's the biggest whale in the history of the universe. Right. It was such a loud and prolonged sound that it would have to be made by a creature larger than anything that we currently know of.

Cthulhu. Right. So, hey, Cthulhu, it's got to be him. It's interesting, if you listen to the sound unaltered, it's just this really low rumble, and it goes on for ages. But if you speed it up really fast, it goes bloop. Really? Which is why they call it the bloop.

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to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Which is also why a lot of people thought the Cloverfield monster was Cthulhu, because apparently on the official website, there was a bloop, right? Was there? Yeah, they tied it into a fictional slushy maker. Japanese company. And so that had something to do with it as well.

Once people started seeing the supplemental material, they started to draw their own conclusions. And of course, they turned out to be wrong. But it just shows how imaginative and passionate the Lovecraft focus is. And it shows how smart JJ Abrams is, because the dude is the master marketer. So let's talk a little bit more about the Necronominal.

Sure. So the text, Strickland, is often considered a book of spells. Most of the people who get their hands on the Necronomicon in Lovecraft stories end up using it to conjure some of the great old ones. Remember, Cthulhu is the priest of the great old ones. And terrible, terrible things happen. The skies open up.

People tend to disappear under terrible circumstances. And the author, let's talk about the author of the Necronomicon, he himself, the Mad Arab, Abdul Al-Hazred. That's correct. The Mad Arab, Abdul Al-Hazred. AKA Opium Fiend. Yes, the eighth century opium fiend. From Yemen.

Supposed to be supposedly a poet who at some point gets this, well, I suppose he gets some strange inspiration, possibly fueled by drugs. Right. And it's a good way to say it. It writes down this book called the Necronomicon. Right, originally called Al-Azif, right? Right.

And that refers to a sound made by night insects in the desert. Or demons howling, depending on who you ask. Right. That's correct. And so we have this text that's supposed to be very rambling and crazy. And interesting thing is that Lovecraft never wrote the full Necronomicon.

He actually wanted to create it. That's right. And dabbled on a shorter version at one point. Right. He wrote a couple of passages from an abridged version. And there are a few passages that are fairly famous in Lovecraft lore. But he wanted to create this mythology

where scholars in his world would have certain books they would refer to whenever they needed to study these creatures. OK. And some of those books actually were real, right? That's correct. Some of the books were, in fact, real books that have a historical background.

Most of them were just figments of his imagination. He created these Lovecrafts, I should say. Sure. A Lovecrafts imagination. Not the Mad Arab. No, not the Mad Arab. So yeah, it's interesting. You're talking about an author, Lovecraft,

who creates this fictional author, the Mad Arab, who in turn creates a fictional book called the Necronomicon, parts of which Lovecraft actually wrote out. Right. So that is the spoiler for those of you who weren't familiar with this at all. Necronomicon, completely fictional. Mad Arab, completely fictional.

And actually what's cool about Strickland in the article, you make the point that the Necronomicon has not only survived Lovecraft's death, it's thrived. You can find versions of it on Amazon. There's actual cults, whether they realize that the Necronomicon are accepted, the Necronomicon is fictitious. They still, this philosophy of the Necronomicon still figures

very much into their outlook. Then there's other, maybe, I got the impression slightly nuttier cults that actually don't believe the Necronomicon is fictional, right? But it's pervaded into reality, correct? Yeah, all of that is right. It is fascinating because since Lovecraft left such huge gaps with the Necronomicon,

you know, he only wrote little bits and pieces. It's allowed other people to swoop in and fill in those gaps. And make money. And make money. Yeah, I'll never forget, I was in a bookstore. I was in, I think it was South Carolina, I was in a bookstore, this was when I was a teenager. And I'm looking through the books,

I'm just trying to find something to read. And I come across a copy of the Necronomicon and I had to stop and look again because I thought, wait a minute, what? Why would I find a fictional book in a bookstore? And so I took it down and started reading it. And it was filled with lots of tortured kind of prose. Was it good?

No, it was terrible. Did it bite your hand when you tried to grab it? It did not. Evil Dead Reference, we'll come back to that later. Yeah. No, no, it was a terrible book. It was a terrible attempt at trying to make a book sound really dangerous and spooky.

But it was transparent. I mean, it was obvious that it was someone trying to do this, right? All right, you guys, this reality part's boring. Let's go back into the fictional world of Lovecraft and the Necronomicon. OK. Where are we?

Actually, we're in no particular place. We're just in this version of reality that Lovecraft created. How about that? OK. All right, so within this world, you have various creatures. You have various books that all of which are bad. I mean, that's just there are people

who think they can take advantage of them and gain either power or knowledge or some combination thereof. But it always turns out badly for them. In fact, you kind of wonder why people keep bothering. Oh, really? Yeah, that's really what weird fiction is all about. You're talking, when you use the word weird,

you don't just mean unusual. You mean incomprehensible to the human mind. Yeah, I think Josh told me off, Mike, that a lot of other authors kind of have said that's a bit of a cop out on Lovecraft's part because a lot of times he doesn't have to end up being real creative with his descriptions of things.

And he can just say, well, trust me, look upon it, and you shall go insane. Or it's unnameable. Yeah, or unnameable. Yeah, and I think it's brilliant. But yeah, there's definitely an argument on either side. You could argue that, well, the human imagination is so powerful that if you leave it up

to the individual reader, that person is going to make his or her own most horrifying creature. And there's nothing that you as the writer could describe because you don't know that person. You don't know what would horrify that person. Exactly. But by leaving it up to the reader's imagination, suddenly you've made a much more effective monster.

Right, which is kind of what they did with Cloverfield, actually. They did kind of tap into that because they didn't show the monster very much at all. And I thought it was effective. I liked the movie. No, I really enjoyed that as well. I haven't seen it yet.

Both of you shut up. Oh, sorry. Spoiler alert, there's a monster. It's Godzilla. Another thing I thought was cool was that Lovecraft, at one point, said that there are only several official copies of the Necronomicon located in, I think, you listed five different libraries.

And two of them don't even exist. So he dabbled so much between reality and fiction that I think it worked. It ended up being like, you don't know what's real and what isn't. Dude, we're back in Lovecraft's world. OK, sorry. So Strickland, the Necronomicon, was

written by Al Hazred. And I believe he died fairly horribly. Either he was swallowed up after conjuring somebody using the Necronomicon. I think I remember another story where Lovecraft writes about how he was beheaded, but his head was still able to speak. There's several different ways that he supposedly died.

But either way, he died. But his book survived. And it stayed in Arabic, which actually, I believe, none of the original copies in Arabic exist today. But in 950, somebody else found it, and it was translated into Greek, right? Yes, that's right. There are actually several different translations that

are mentioned in Lovecraft's stories. There's Greek. There's Hebrew. There's a few others. There's Latin. I think he said in 1228, Elias Wormius was a priest that translated it into Latin. And then it was banned by Pope Gregory IX.

But in reality, this is what I love, the fiction again. You're not Catholic, are you? No. Is that not Pope Gregory IX? The ninth. Oh, OK. Yeah, Pope Gregory IX. In reality, Elias Wormius was actually a Dutch physician.

So there was no tie there whatsoever. Yeah, that was the mixture of reality and fantasy. Now, the really cool stuff, as far as I'm concerned here, is that he's built up a believable enough base that if you were to just read the story without any other background information, you could totally buy into this mythology. He's really made it very rich and believable. He's anchored it in reality.

And there are Lovecraftian scholars and fans who will talk of this as if it were all real. As if these Greek and other translations of the Necronomicon do, in fact, exist and are, in fact, in these libraries. Right. Well, I know earlier we were talking. And I thought it was odd that he would use people like Elias Wormius, their name, which was a physician.

And then in 1586, Dr. John Dee was an Englishman and a magician when, in fact, he was really just an advisor to Queen Elizabeth. And I thought, well, how strange to use these real people. Like, wouldn't he be found out? But you said that this is the 1920s, and you couldn't go up on the internet and look up who John Dee was.

Right. Now, you had people who, those names would sound familiar. And they'd think, hey, that does lead some credence to this. And I also compared it to Bram Stoker, who did base Dracula off of a real person, Vlad Tepes. But if you were to look into Vlad Tepes' life, you would see that it doesn't really parallel Dracula at all. You could just see where the inspiration came from.

But because you have Vlad Dracul, you have this whole persona there, it lends your story a stronger base in reality. Yeah, yeah. But like you guys said, Lovecraft was a master at mixing reality and fiction, like with the libraries where you could supposedly find the Necronomicon. But also, he would pepper some of the books on the shelves.

I remember in the strange case of Charles Dexter Ward, his ancestor. What was his ancestor's name? I don't remember either. But there were tons of books of magic and the occult. And some of them were real, like the Ars Magna at Ultima. And they would be sitting alongside the Necronomicon. So there were some that were real and some that weren't.

And not only did Lovecraft write about that, he would use books that some of his contemporaries had made up in his books. And they would do just the same, right? They would mention the Necronomicon in their books. Yeah, there was a lot of cross-pollination going on at this time where Lovecraft loved having friends who were also authors.

He was a prolific letter writer. And he encouraged his friends to write stories set in his mythology. And then he would write stories set in theirs as well. So you started to get this really rich background that didn't exist in other authors' works. Because in a way, it's almost like writing fan fiction. Except in this case, the people who are writing fan fiction

are really well-known authors. Right, right. Hey friends, whether you need it for work, school, or a special project, it's important to have the right printer, right, Josh? That's right. And the Epson EcoTank is a new type of printer that doesn't use cartridges. Stop buying expensive ink cartridges and save yourself the frustration of replacing ink cartridges ever again.

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Right. There's some pretty noteworthy cameos that the Necronomicon has made, most notably in the Evil Dead series. Yes, that's my favorite. Was it in Evil Dead, or just Evil Dead 2? No. It's in Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. Army of Darkness, actually, was my favorite scene with the Necronomicon because he has

to approach it on the hill and repeat the Klaatu Varata, and then he can't remember the last word. Isn't that from the day the Earth stood still? Yeah, that's actually, that was the one of the things about, yeah, Sam Raimi just loves to quote from other movies and science fiction horror, everything. He's one of those guys who just has that huge Labyrinthian library of trivia in his head, and so yeah, he brought a lot of that out into those movies, but the interesting thing about the Necronomicon in those movies is that it doesn't really resemble the one in

Lovecraft's stories. Right. The Book of the Dead is what they call it in Evil Dead, and it's a, or at least in Army of Darkness it was like this, it had an evil face, it was like leather bound, but it had a mouth and eyes, and that's why it bit him when he tried to pick it up. Which is what I was referencing earlier. Right, right. It's actually bound in flesh and written in blood.

Oh, is that what it was? Yeah, and it's a little different from the Necronomicon in Lovecraft's stories, but the Necronomicon, you gotta admit, that's an awesome name for an evil book. Oh, exactly. So it totally made sense to reference it. And a lot of people I think have sort of a passing familiarity with Lovecraft's stories stuff, so if you mention it, they get the idea, oh, that's an evil book. They don't need to have this wealth of information in their heads.

Gotcha. So my favorite reference, and you actually pointed out in the article, Strick, is the appearance of the Necronomicon in The Simpsons. Did you guys see this one? I did. It was in the episode Brawl and the Family, where there's a meeting of the Republican Party, and Mr. Burns goes, and now Bob Dole will read from the Necronomicon, and Bob Dole comes to the podium, and he's wearing like a black robe, and he starts chanting in Latin,

reading from the book. It's perfect. Awesome. Yeah, I think my favorite is when it makes a very, very brief appearance in Friday the 13th, Part 9, Jason goes to hell. It's just one of those things where the camera's just panning by, and if you pay attention, you see, hey, that's the Necronomicon from the Evil Dead movies. So it went on a table or something?

Yeah, it's just there in the shot. I mean, there's no reference to it. No one picks it up. Where was it? Was it at Jason's house? Yeah, it's toward the end of the movie. There's a few different references. I think you also, if you look, you see a crate that's labeled Arctic Expedition.

So fans of horror movies, you'll know what that's from, too, so. Awesome. Jason goes to hell. Was that the one? That was it. Yeah, that was it. Also in Pumpkin Head 2. Yep.

Also in Aquitaine Hunger Force, which we love. Excellent. And the real Ghostbusters. Yep. The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. Mm-hmm. And Metalock. I don't even know.

Thank you. You don't know Metalock. Now what is that? That's the cartoon on Adult Swim that details the misadventures of a death metal band called Death Clock. You almost said adventures. Very nice catch. Misadventures.

Much different. So this was actually in strict. Thank you so much for coming in. Dude, you saved us. This is one of those, every once in a while, we'll do a podcast where we're like, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Go read the article. You clearly should go read these articles.

If we've piqued your interest at all, first of all, go start reading Lovecraft. He's awesome. He was also an awesome person, his real life. He had a woman that he lived with who was old enough to be his mother that he loved very much, but people posit that they never consummated their relationship. Is that correct? Yep. He was just an all-around weird guy, but really sweet and cute and not really.

Well, I think he does in that 1920s sort of story. Well, he doesn't have like a, yeah, third eye. Okay, right. But he was an interesting character, an incredible writer, and Strickland wrote two really good articles on them. So if you want to read more about it, you can go to howstuffworks.com and type in Cthulhu C-T-H-U-L-U in the search bar. You could also type in Necronomicon, which would be spelled N-E-C-R-O-N-O-M-I-C-O-N, Necronomicon.

We can find both of those articles. And I think if you type either of those words into Google in general, you're going to find a whole world away to you. Yes. Just interesting stuff, interesting way to waste some time, right? But you dare not speak it and look at it, or you shall go insane. Clearly. And also, we can all look forward to the day the stars align, and the stone city of Relay

rises up out of the ocean, and Thulhu takes possession of the Earth again, and we are all screwed. Awesome. Well, as we would say in Lovecraft's universe, yah yah Cthulhu Phatagan. No better way to end than that. Thank you for that. No better way to end than that. All right.

Well, since Strickland just said something that we can't pronounce ourselves, that means it's listener mail time. All right, so Chuck, what do you have for us today? I'm just going to call this the saddest thing I've ever heard. Oh, no. This is from Vic in Lincolnshire, Illinois. It's a little lengthy, but I'm going to read it fast. Vic is a listener who has borrowed his daughter's iPod indefinitely, he said, was kind of taking

it over. That is the saddest thing I've ever heard. It is. The end. And he, this came about as a suggestion that we do something on wrongful death lawsuits, or just wrongful death, period. I don't like where this is going, Chuck. Back in 1970, my dad had a heart attack and was hospitalized in the Coordinary Care Unit.

They had trouble stabilizing his heart rhythm and decided to implant a temporary demand pacemaker. I guess in theory, when his heart needed an assist, the pacemaker would kick in and get things back on track. We went to visit him the next morning. We could tell that everything was kind of crazy in the CCU, people in a frenzy, all kinds of activity. And we stood beside my father talking to him. I was 16 years old and I was fascinated with the oscilloscope on the shelf above his head,

routinely drawing a regular paced heartbeat. Now familiar from all the medical shows in the last 40 years. This is when he goes, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. The nurse on duty saw us at dad's bed and quickly came over to clean him up for the visitors, comb his hair, shave him. She was running late and hurriedly plugged his electric shaver into the outlet, the same outlet as the temporary pacemaker power supply. Almost immediately, the heartbeat trace went wild on the monitor.

I had my eyes on it the whole time. It first confused as to whether I was seeing electronic interference or actual interference with the beating of my dad's heart. It quickly became clear that it was a ladder. My dad yelled, almost leaping out of bed, and fell back dead. Oh my god. Right in front of his face, at 16, in the hospital because the nurse plugged this thing in.

Wow. Awful. No happy ending here. They tried in vain to revive my father, age 59, a wrongful death lawsuit ensued, but my mother became too sick to go through with it. My understanding is that the pacemaker technology has vastly improved over the years. I'm not sure if there are other stories like mine. And here's a little interesting side note at the end.

In the CCU at 16, I noticed four little shelves about seven feet off the ground in the corners of the room. I asked the resident pastor what they were there for. He informed me that someone was doing an experiment with near-death out-of-body experiences because of the high, quote, traffic in that room. Apparently, there were cards with little shapes on them, one on top of the shelves. If my dad had been revived, they would have asked him if he recalled hovering above his bed and did he look down and see those shapes?

Weird. Weird. So that is a side note. And Vic. It's a hell of a side note. This is a long time ago. And I wrote you back and said I was very sorry to hear about this, but it was a great story. And thanks for sharing.

And we will definitely add wrongful death lawsuits to the suggestion box for sure. For sure. And thanks for sharing that. Yeah. Interesting and awful story. Do you have any interesting or awful stories or you just want to say hi or what up or what does it mention unicorns maybe? Sure.

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