Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 170: Everyday is Halloween(And Not In a Fun Way!)

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

Halloween Special Featuring Stories From Special Guests: Gangsta Boo, The First Lady of Three 6 Mafia. Her Catalog is streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, and all the usual places and you can catch her now on Run The Jewels' HolyCalamavote Special now streaming on HBOMax. Scarah, The Damsel of the Doomed! Host of Horror Web, and the Tub of Terror which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjeYPlaunEEtKmoqUkUcWMQ Ken Layne, Host of the inimitable Desert Oracle Radio available wherever fine podcasts are consumed and the author of the forthcoming Desert Oracle, Vol. 1: "Strange True Tales From The American Southwest" available for pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374722388 Daniel Pujol, Nashville based punk rock writer-musician. He's got a patreon with music and poetry you should check out here: https://www.patreon.com/pujoldotrocks

In the summer of 1995, the Cleveland-based hip-hop quartet Bone Thugs-N-Harmony put out their first full-length album, East 1999 Eternal. That August, I got a copy for my 10th birthday. The group had made a name for themselves just a year earlier when their debut EP, Creepin' on a Come Up, had garnered some mainstream success, spawning hit singles like Thuggish Ruggish Bone and For the Love of Money. These were already staples of the homemade mixtapes my friends and I made. We'd wake patiently every Monday night with a blank cassette in our tape deck and our fingers resting eagerly on the record button when our local hip-hop DJs 8-Ball and the Chicken Man queued up a favorite

we'd capture for posterity. Both records were produced by hip-hop mogul Eric Easy E. Ride of N.W.A., the controversial L.A.-based hip-hop group that had some years earlier drawn the ire of the federal government with the not-so-subtly titled song, Fuck the Police. Creeping on the come-up was a short but intense exploration of the gritty realities of growing up on the streets of Cleveland, but there was something about it that was new to hip-hop – a distinct spiritual undertone. The album begins with a track called Mr. Ouija, which depicts the brother's bone consulting the wisdom of the mysterious title character, presumably the personification of the notorious

Ouija board. They ask him if they should expect to meet the same fates that had befallen young black men from the streets before. Dear Mr. Ouija, I want to know my future. Will I die of murder, of bloody, bloody murder? Come come again. By the time East 1999 Eternal dropped, EZ had already passed, the apparent result of complications from a particularly aggressive case of HIV AIDS infection.

His rapid deterioration made his demise an tantantalizing material for conspiracy mongers. One prominent theory suggests that Wright was the first in a series of three high-profile murders committed by the infamous Marion Shugnay, the head of the legendary West Coast hip-hop label Death Row Records. He would also be implicated by the end of the decade in the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. Others thought there had to be more malevolent forces at work in R.I.T.'s death. This idea was exacerbated by his protégé's preoccupation with the Ouija board and

occult imagery. Bad juju brought on by the Cleveland rapper's experimentations with Satan's preferred board game. By the time I heard the album, I had already developed a sort of perverse fascination with the Ouija and spiritualism in general. My family's friend and neighbor growing up, Miss Gayle, was a bona fide practitioner of the dark arts. Tarot, Ouija, palm reading, you name it, she was into it. And Gayle just didn't do this sort of witchy stuff. She looked the part.

She kind of reminded me of Stevie Nicks a little bit. This gave her more credibility as far as I was concerned, but it made my mom nervous. As a recent convert to Pentecostalism, she was concerned that Gail's interest in the esoteric would leave her, and by extension us, vulnerable to demonic possession. Now, I wasn't afraid of being possessed, but Gail did freak me out plenty. Stories of all these satanic rituals that had supposedly taken place in the small Appalachian mountain town I grew up in. One such tale dealt with a band of witches that had come up from North Carolina to conduct a so-called Black Mass. Gale included all the important details, like how the participants hung these naked baby dolls in the trees of the lily-cornered woods, and chanting spells, covering them in gasoline before committing ritual suicide and sacrifice to Satan by burning themselves alive.

For those who never spent a day at the foot of the cross, phrases like black mass and ritual suicide may seem like the stuff of Hollywood, but they're enough to make a young kid steeped in Christian baggage sleep with his lights on every night. And yet, as terrified as I was of the occult, I was drawn to it. Upon Gale's suggestion, I went to the school library and checked out Daniel Cohen's book, Curses, Hexes, and Spells.

This little volume had frequently landed on various banned books lists in the United States, and to my knowledge, remains the only children's how-to guide to witchcraft. I was both repelled and fascinated by its depiction of Baphomet, the image of a man with a goat's head, first drawn by 19th century

French magician and occultist Elias Lévy. It's head, first drawn by 19th century French magician and occultist Elias Lévy, had been used earlier in the 14th century as damning evidence in the idolatry case against the much maligned Knights Templar. Today, the Baphomet is ubiquitous, especially in hip-hop. If you look at the cover of Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne album, you can see a bunch of them. William Peter Blatty's 1973 horror classic The Exorcist has cast a long shadow over public perceptions of the Ouija board. The story depicts a middle-class

Catholic girl's ordeal of possession by a malevolent spirit after a seemingly harmless Ouija session. But before The Exorcist had made it into a national sensation, the average American household had a considerably more benign opinion about the game. As Mitch Horowitz recounts in his book, A Cold America, the Ouija board debuted in the winter of 1891 at the now-defunct Pittsburgh-based novelty store Danziger & Sons at the cost of $1.50. This wonderful talking board, as it was first built, differed little from the mysterious, mystifying game sold by Parker Brothers today. It's a flat board covered with letters, numbers, and the words yes, no, and goodbye. The board is accompanied by a planchette,

an arrowhead-shaped device, usually with a small, magnified glass window in the center. Two or more players, ages six and up, sit around the board with their fingers on the planchette and ask it questions. The planchette moves from character to character and spells out answers, seemingly of its own volition. Now whether this is due to black magic or the unconscious mind is for the player to decide. By the time Luigi

appeared, spiritualists like New York's Fox Sisters and Madame Helena Blavatsky were already national pseudo-celebrities, conducting seances in the homes of influential people, most notably Thomas Edison. In the context of influential people, most notably Thomas Edison. In the context of 19th century American Christianity, there was no spiritual conflict with which it was concerned. Spiritualism wasn't yet seen as a contradiction in Christian doctrine. In an era where war and childbirth and preventable diseases were claiming countless lives, it was a feat to make it to your late 50s. The idea of the living being able to commune with the dead helped many Americans come to term with their own finite existences.

During the Great Depression, the Fold Company, which had started to distribute the Ouija Board nationally in 1898, opened new factories left and right to keep up with demand. The company's founder, William Fold, became a literal victim of his own success. In 1927, Fold fell to his death from the third floor of one of his newly opened factories, a factory he had eerily claimed earlier that the Ouija specifically urged him to build. Even more bizarre Ouija stories started cropping up in national papers in the decades to follow, Horowitz reports. In 1930, two women in Buffalo, New York murdered another woman in their neighborhood claiming the Ouija instructed them to. In 1958, a Connecticut woman left a spirit she claimed to have contacted through a Ouija board $152,000 in her will. The judge eventually ruled against

executing it. In the Smithsonian, Linda Rodriguez-McRobbie points out that the Ouija and spiritualism in general tend to thrive during uncertain times. By 1967, as more troops were sent to Vietnam and race riots broke out across the country, Ouija sales outpaced even Monopoly. It only made sense when I ripped the packaging off my copy of East 1999 Eternal and took out the liner notes to see a Ouija printed inside. The caption on the back of the sleeve read, Mr. Ouija, Mystic Oracle. The following cryptic message went beneath it, written backwards. I found myself without morals where it all began. Looking on the place where we all want to live, I stopped to see forever, not wanting to see wrong, continued i stopped not rightly to clear my head for a moment and traveled on three weeks and at the third week i looked to my heart to see love and so i followed so many battles i fought pain in my left hand looking for peace in

my right extended out i have walked away from my heart and crossed the last day i looked right into the valley of evil and found the home of the beast. To know my enemy I have done wrong, though to the land of the heartless I can do no wrong. No more I see the devil and he binds me, but aren't devils merely angels tearing away your guilt? I stopped on the last day of the last month of the last year again. I have found my heart, my life must be righteous in a place unknown so I can rest my soul where it all began. The concluding stanza was of a different form. Mystic Fortune Company, East 1999 Eternal Street, Cleveland, Ohio, 00999-1900-622-6636, extension A. Miss Scala gave me my formal introduction to alternative spirituality,

so I consulted her as to what it all meant. With a three-quarter smoked camo full flavor dangling from the corner of her lips, Gale took me into her bathroom, which smelled of her man's high karate and secondhand smoke. She held the liner notes up to the mirror in order to read the backwards message properly. She began to squint, mumbling something under her breath. I stood by her side in a daze, eager to receive revelation. After a brief deliberation, she turned to me and told me that the words were some kind of poem, and whoever wrote that was probably a Satanist because she could tell by the language. Thoroughly creeped but still fascinated, I became a bone devotee.

Listening to their music seemed even more dangerous and forbidden now than it had been previously, when the only element of risk was having to stow my CD in an old shoebox in my closet along with other contraband of interest to adolescent boys. Now I was gambling my eternal destination. Conspiracies regarding the group's allegiance with the devil were everywhere. One prevailing rumor of the day was that the Bone Thugs had sold their souls to the devil for the superhuman ability to rap incredibly fast. It's not unlike the legend of the Mississippi blues man Robert Johnson, who is rumored to have done the same at the Devil's Crossroads in Clarksdale, in exchange for his singular

mastery of the guitar. The cold imagery in the album's liner notes, not to mention their deceptively innocent hit The Crossroads, did nothing to quash this notion. In fact, such rumors of Bone's affiliation with Beelzebub reached a fever pitch so fast, no doubt fueled by the Ouija's dubious reputation, that it was believed in some circles that if you read the liner note passage, you were subjected to what was known as the Bone Ouija Curse. You, like the Cleveland rappers, would be killed as tribute to Satan on January 1st, 1999. But January 1st, 1999 came and went without calamity befalling me or the Bone Thugs.

For a boy raised in the Southern Church, though, the possibility hadn't seemed so outlandish. We spent our Sundays speaking in tongues and healing with the laying on of hands, and at the same time, Satan was making a comeback in the American consciousness. Occultism was the subject of many a pre-internet culture conspiracy. Before, there was a broad cross-section of people to validate your kookiness on Reddit. Most of them had their origins in ladies' prayer meetings. One of these was the urban legend that corporate giant Procter & Gamble had donated a portion of their proceeds to the Church of Satan. At the time, Procter & Gamble was a major sponsor of daytime soap operas, one in particular being Days of Our Lives. In the mid-90s, the writers introduced a controversial story arc where one

of the female leads, Marlena, becomes possessed by the devil. Many of the same women attending those ladies' prayer meetings were also Days fanatics, and they arrived at the conclusion that the Cincinnati-based corporation must have some involvement with the Church of Satan. Somehow, this idea even trickled down to small-town Whitesburg, Kentucky. No easy feat at a time before the internet was readily available. So my devout Pentecostal mother proceeded to do what any good Christian would do, which was to purge our home of all Procter & Gamble products and boycott them at the grocery store. To this day, my Aunt Brenda still checks the labels on her food and cleaning products to

make sure they aren't P&G. Can't be too careful. Coincidentally Bone Thugs put out a song around the same time called Days of Our Lives, turning the soap opera into a street opera. Depicting the threat of violence in the wasteland in which the song is set, it draws a connection between the earthly and the scatological. We gotta prepare for eternal warfare. This past May, my mother retired after having worked for more than 30 years as the city clerk of my hometown. One afternoon, she called me to tell me I'd been subpoenaed over yet another unpaid private student loan I'd foolishly taken out as an 18-year-old and had been ducking ever since.

Upon my arrival, I noticed a black Chrysler 300 in the driveway that wasn't hers. When I made my way into the house, sitting at her kitchen table was a woman who I didn't quite recognize fidgeting with some Campbell cigarettes. Tom, you remember Gail, don't you? Of course I did. We hadn't heard much from Gail since those days, and sometime in the early aughts, my mom had gotten a mysterious delivery at her office. It was a landscape painting, a quaint, sort of Bob Rosk-esque cabin

settled next to a river tucked in between some mountains. Gail had painted it for her. Later, I'd find out that Gail had been through it. Her husband of many years had beaten her for the better part of their marriage, and Gail's scarcity in the intervening years was probably a result of her trying to escape that situation alive. As spiritualism sees renewed interest in troubling times, I now understood why Gail found solace in tarot readings and fortune-telling. She'd inherited a long tradition. As Silvia Federici has written in her history, Caliban and the Witch, witch hunts began as a means of domination over

the lives of lower class villagers, particularly women in 16th century Europe. The folklore and ritual practices that became understood as witchcraft were a threat to capitalism's accumulation of natural resources and their control by a privileged few. Federici writes on the testimony of the accused at witch trials, Their poverty stands out in the confessions. It was in times of need that the devil appeared to them, to assure them that from now on they should never want, although the money he would give them on such occasions would soon turn to ashes,

a detail perhaps related to the experience of superinflation common at the time. As for the diabolical crimes of the witches, they appear to us as nothing more than the class struggle played out at the village level. The evil eye, the curse of the beggar to whom an aim has been refused. The default on the payment of rent, the demand for public assistance. This might also explain why many of us today, disproportionately women, trans, and non-binary people, have found an aspirational figure in the archetype of the witch. After Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation of Supreme Court justice, in spite of multiple credible allegations of sexual assault, groups convened a cursing.

The figure of the witch, even at a symbolic level, provides an identity for women and others preferable to the one this country is willing to offer them at the moment. If this seems a world apart from gangster rap, the two converge in Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Hip-hop, even prior to its expression through Bone's esoteric lens, has always included spiritual examination as a means of coming to terms with the plight of black youth in America. Before Bohm, this was most apparent through the Islamic alphabetology of the nations of gods and earth, often incorporating the lyrics of rappers like Rakim, Nas, and the Wu-Tang

Clan. What Bohm brought back to the forefront was that dormant hybrid of Christian doctrine and occultism, unseen since the early 1900s when Middle America integrated church-approved worship with more arcane spiritual practices. The occult aesthetics of Bone's album art and music videos mesh seamlessly with Christian theology. On the day of Gil's visit, all I wanted to do was reminisce about the Bone Thugs Ouija curse, but I realized it might have been a bit much to jump into after having gone

twenty-something years without seeing her. Instead, I offered the record and said, How you been? before taking my subpoena and heading to the lawyer's office. On my way out the door, I remember thinking that Gail didn't look a damn thing like Stevie Nicks, actually. Maybe it was just her sartorial choices, largely unchanged since the days I knew her. The earth tones, the sheer summer scarf, the sandals, the witchy accoutrements that adorn her wrist sneers.

Under all that, she was an ordinary person, as witches always have been. But she was one of the first that showed me the path to eternity at a Cleveland address reflected on the surface of a bathroom mirror in Wattsburg, Kentucky. Five years ago, the Trillbilly Workers Party, Masters of the Macabre, created their hallmark of horror. Many would argue that nothing of significance has happened since until now there's no life without darkness Thank you. And welcome everybody to the Trillbillies Halloween special. I'm Tom Sexton, and coming up, we've got a nice lineup. We've assembled a nice murderer's row of world-class storytellers to tell you some of their favorite

scary stories and seasonally appropriate readings and other cool things we've got compiled here for you. I understand that in these times it might be hard to enjoy the kitschy fun of sitting out in the woods and telling ghost stories. Or whatever it is you do to celebrate this thing. But with everything going on in the world we got people getting killed in the streets we got fucking pandemic

and everything else but I always like the storytelling tradition even if sometimes it's

the reality is even a bit scarier than you know the stuff we're putting out there but I think that I got some good tales for you. So I hope you sit back and enjoy it.

And happy Halloween, everybody. Thank you. ¶¶ Now, I grew up in probably the spookiest place in the United States. A lot of places make that claim, but New Orleans is deeply haunted and cursed and always has been for its nearly four centuries of history under under various nations until it ended up somehow as part of the United States. And my grandmother was a mix of, I think what you'd say, the two spookiest kind of nationalities in the world, which is Irish and Cajun. kind of nationalities in the world, which is Irish and Cajun. These are the cultural groups in the United States that are most prone to hauntings, poltergeists, murdering each other, crying about it constantly from the grave afterwards. afterwards so we were used to a certain amount of spookiness from my grandmother who insisted that we call her ma d which was some kind of bastardized cajun french

variation on grandmother and after my grandpa died she moved in with us and that's when the horror started because she moved in and my parents decided my god we finally get to go out now and then. We have somebody to watch the kids. So they'd go out to see a band, some music, dinner, whatever the hell they did. And as soon as it was dark, and it was always much darker in our house when she was there because she'd turn off all the lights. Whether she was trying to save energy

or whether she never really got used to having electricity, we never knew. But instantly the house was much spookier and the neighborhood kids would come by to hang out for one reason, because they could kind of do what they wanted because she was old and slow and would rarely get out of this this armchair that she sat in but when she did she'd often have a switch you know to come after the kids with and she didn't really care if you were her grandchild or not you know she'd just get the switch or as she got older she'd she'd just get the switch, or as she got older, she'd make you go get

the switch. She'd say, go in the yard and get me a switch. And of course, you don't do anything like that. You go in the yard, jump the fence, and you don't come back until she's in bed. By which time she's forgotten whatever it was that she was threatening violence over. forgotten whatever it was that she was threatening violence over. One night she sat us down, and it was in the fall or winter, because it got dark very early, and she said that we could watch a movie after she told us a story. So we sit down and she starts off with, this is when I was a child and all

of my brothers and sisters lived in the same house as I did. And you think, well, that's normal, kind of. But then she adds, and I don't think I knew this at this point in my life she said we were orphans her father and her mother had both died when most of the kids were minors I think there was one who was 18 and the rest were anywhere from around

7, 6 or 7 to their mid teens and they both died early in the last century from around seven, six or seven, to their mid-teens. And they both died early in the last century and left all these kids and kind of one or two semi-adults living in this old farmhouse in Cajun country around Opelousas in Louisiana, where they were born and raised. There was no electricity. They had no car.

They had had a horse at some point, but I think it got stolen or they managed to kill it out of ineptitude. And the two older boys would leave to work. And there were different things you'd do for work. You'd go, like like catch nutria on the levees and you'd skin them and you'd sell the the fur or you'd get fish and sell them in the fish market whatever and they mostly ate off what they grew or shot around the house rabbits and whatnot squirrels, they had chickens, et cetera. So their father, Jacques, had died sometime earlier, and their mother died in all of the kids' living memory,

and it hadn't been that long since she was gone. So they were doing what they do in the house, you know, divvying up the chores to make food and whatnot. And they had dinner, and they had a radio that they'd listen to, she'd tell us, for about an hour because they had to spare the batteries. And afterwards, they were just kind of sitting around on the porch because it was cooler in the evening,

and they had kind of a half-assed barn outside. It was pretty small, and it had a loft where they kept straw and hay and whatnot for the horse. And they were sitting there looking out, and a light kind of moved through the air, just about treetop level, and went into the loft, which had a little window looking toward the house of the barn. So one or two kids saw this, and they'd yell for the older kids. The older boys come out, and they're kind of gathered there,

trying to see what happened to it. And at this point, in full darkness, there's no electricity for miles around, where they thought this light went in, they now see a shape that they describe as an angel and is a white sort of hazy figure standing in this window. And they're all absolutely crippled with fear. They didn't know what to do about it,

and nobody had the nerve to go into the barn and see what was up there, especially after hearing from the little kids that the light did not appear just like turning on or someone with a lantern or something. It appeared to like fly in through the window. three or four hours until the little kids started falling asleep, just staring in total terror at this thing that they thought was an angel sent by God to kill them because they'd done something wrong, or it was the angel of one of their avenging parents.

And this is what really scared the hell out of them, that it was not God or Gabriel or whatever, but that it was one of their own parents come back from the dead to torture them, basically, with terror and fear. And this is a very kind of southern growing up kind of thing. You're less thinking that one of your parents is going to come back and hug you like, you know, Joe Biden or something and say, I've missed you, son. You know, they're going to come back for vengeance. So the kids never quite shook it off. It was in the next week or so when the oldest brother, who went by the nickname Cap, C-A-P-P, for unknown reasons as usual,

was coming back from where he had traps set up for crabs and such, and he stepped on a water moccasin. And a water moccasin struck him, and their pit vip vipers like rattlesnakes sunk its fangs into his calf and he was a couple of miles from the house and miles and miles away from town or a clinic or anything else so not knowing what else to do he had heard on some kind of like superhero radio show about sweating out poison you know it was like superman radio theater or something or some whatever low rent version they had in uh in louisiana at the time, the Mutual Radio Network, whatever. So he runs, and he runs as fast as he can, and he runs for miles and miles in the oppressive, humid, like, Louisiana, deep south heat,

with the idea that maybe he can sweat it out. He gets back to the house, and they're all convinced this was what the the angel of death was there to to provide the premonition you know i'm going to get one of you tomorrow or the next couple of days so when he got there they just figured that he was he was marked for death this kind of deep gloom that goes in these sorts of environments where the most natural kind of first choice is death and suffering. And you kind of, you know, go down from there.

So no one really made any moves to, like, try to drain the poison or anything else. They just sort of left him to die because they figured he'd die so he got into his bed and he sweat terribly and everything else and they're all talking about how well you know we we did this that disrespected mother we threw out her chest or whatever we threw out her little box of trinkets and, either because he was young and strong and the poison didn't hit him too hard, the toxins and the venom, or because it was a dry bite, which happens with rattlesnakes and water moccasins as well. bite which happens with rattlesnakes and water moccasins as well he managed to live but for the rest of his life he thought that he had escaped some sort of sin because he'd stepped

on this this snake while you know doing the sinful thing of going and feeding all of his orphan brothers and sisters and that this was some kind of you know burden that he carried on him for the rest of his life um it would have been easy to shrug off her stories but she was so spooky that they continued even when we were kids, my siblings and I, we got firsthand dealings with her supernatural habits, even during the time of 70s television and CB radio, electricity and whatnot. radio, electricity, whatnot. So before she moved to our house, she had been calling my mother every day for a week,

saying there's black lines on the ceiling over the living room of this double shotgun that they lived in at the Lower Ninth Ward, where I had lived, too, for a while as a kid. And every day she'd call with an update to my mom. Oh, the squiggly black lines are moving. They got into the hall now. And now they got into this other room where they kept the dining room table and stuff.

And then finally back to the end where there was a bedroom and a kitchen. And my mom would say, oh, you know, you're losing it. I'll come over and check. So she came over and checked. She said, I don't see anything. And she's like, that's right there,

the squiggly black lines. Finally, the black lines got to the back of the house and that's the night that my dad woke up all the kids, my mom, and said everybody get dressed. Three in the morning everybody's kind of zombified so we get dressed. I was seven years old at the time and we're just standing in the living room by the front door. And my mom says to my dad, Ron, why are we awake? And he says, the phone's going to ring. And about three seconds passes and the phone, you know, one of those big black old bell phones. He picks it up. Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah, we'll be right there. What the hell is that?

So, the black lines got to the back of the house. My grandfather had a heart attack. The ambulance raced over. By the time we got there, he was dead. And that was the end of the black lines through the house. That was the end of the black lines through the house. And that's when Mahdi moved in with us and terrorized us for the rest of her life. I'm sorry. Thank you. My Dead TV Man by Daniel Luca Pujol It's about third grade, mid 90s, probably about fall winter time. I'm putting my little boots on and I'm using the arm of the living room sofa as a footrest. It's probably about 6.30, 7am. Sun's up just enough to where you don't need to turn a light

bulb on, but it's kinda like blue-gray everywhere. Not dark, just kinda blue-gray. Anyways, my old house I grew up in was very American old. Its original segment was built during the Madison presidency, and the family that built it lived in it from generation to generation until about the 1980s when the last blood member of that family died and their surviving in-laws sold it and then moved on to the lot next door. Now, by the time we got there, there was one surviving in-law, an elderly widow named Mrs. Blank, who would tell us about our house.

And I took her garbage out every Wednesday. Mrs. Blank would tell us what all the rooms were for and when they showed up. She said its oldest segment was the living room with an open area that led out to one of the porches and that open area was connected to a bedroom. The combined living room and open area before the bedroom and had about five big old windows in it. And that's where I am. I'm in the living room with all those windows at 6.37 a.m. where it's very blue and very gray. I've just tied my little boot and I'm bending up while turning around to leave when my eyes hit the black mirror of our dead TV screen. I saw an old man in it with this slack-jawed disfigured face like a dry ass floppy Halloween mask and his reflection looked like he was just standing in the middle of the room behind me to the right.

Now, if that's true, this guy should have been in front of me when I was tying my boot. So I snap around. Nobody's there. This guy's not where he should be. But as I survey the room, I can still see him reflected in every piece of glass, as if he were standing in the middle of the living room. I see him portrait style, facing forward on the dead CRT. I see the back of his white-haired head reflected in a large framed picture on the opposite

wall. And I see his profiles and all the remaining glass, windows, big wall hung pictures, small framed pictures on the fireplace mantel, everywhere, glass, every place that isn't mirrored at 6.37am in the blue-gray and he's just standing there still like he's gasping on pause he didn't acknowledge me at all he was just there stood there pause there stuck there. But me, I was not any of those things because I was out of there and I booked it and I went to school. Now Mrs. Blank, she didn't just tell stories. She would print copies of her old family photos for us as gifts and she would tell us about the people in her

photos. Years and years later, my mom showed me Mrs. Blank's newest gift. It was a black and white family photo taken on the front porch of the house's oldest segment and my dead TV man was in that photo. Apparently, my dead TV man had served in World War II and gotten frostbite. It had partially disfigured his face, and it had become more noticeable as he aged. I never saw him again. I never saw him again. Never saw him again. But if I did, I'd say thank you, my dead TV man,

for fighting fascism and showing me your hideous face. I think about it all the time. Happy Halloween, y'all. Don't boo. Vote. Peace out. Ha! Hello ghouls, ghasts, and non-binary bats. My name is Scara, damsel of the doomed, and I am an ancient witch.

I'm also a horror host for HorrorWeb, and I discuss horror movies from my tub of terror, which you can find on YouTube. Oh, and I'm the lead singer of a horror pop punk band called The Immortals. I'd like to thank Tom, Terrence, and Tanya for allowing me to participate in this very spooky Halloween episode. I will be reading The Witch by Elizabeth Willis. Now, this poem is simply delightful as it lists a series of signs that could identify someone as being a witch. As you listen, I'm sure you can relate to several. Oh, and that part about the devil's tongue, well, that's my favorite. Anyway, here we go. The Witch by Elizabeth Willis. A witch can char milk from an axe handle. A witch bewitches a man's shoe.

A witch sleeps naked. Witch ointment on the back will allow you to fly through the air. A witch carries the four of clubs in her sleeve. A witch may be sickened at the scent of roasting meat. A witch will neither sink nor swim. When crushed, a witch's bones will make a fine glue. A witch will pretend not to be looking at her own image in a window. A witch will gaze wistfully at the glitter of a clear night. A witch may take the form of a cat in order to sneak into

a good man's chamber. A witch's breasts will be pointed rather than round as discovered in the trials of the 1950s. A powerful witch may cause a storm at sea. With a glance, she will make rancid the fresh butter of her righteous neighbor. Even our fastest dogs cannot catch a witch hare. A witch has been known to cry out while her husband places inside her the image of a child. A witch may be burned for tying knots in a marriage bed. A witch may produce no child for years at a time. A witch may speak a foreign language to no one in particular. She may appear to frown when she believes she is smiling. If her husband dies unexpectedly, she may refuse to marry his brother. A witch has been known to weep at the sight of her own child. She may appear to be

acting in a silent film whose placards are missing. In Hollywood, the sky is made of tin. A witch makes her world of air, then fire, and then planets, of cardboard, then ink, then a compass. A witch desires to walk rather than be carried or pushed in a cart. When walking, a witch will turn suddenly and pretend to look at something very small. The happiness of an entire house may be ruined by a witch hair touching a metal cross. The devil does not speak to a witch. He only moves his tongue. An executioner may find the body of a witch insensitive to an iron spike. An unrepentant witch may be converted with a fetal lead in the eye. Enchanting witch powder

may be hidden in a girl's hair. When a witch is hungry, she can make soup by stirring water with her hand. I have heard of a poor woman changing herself into a pigeon. At times, a witch will seem to struggle against an unknown force stronger than herself. She will know things she has not seen with her eyes. She will have opinions about distant cities. A witch may cry out sharply at the sight of a known criminal dying of thirst. She finds it difficult to overcome the sadness of the last war. A nightmare is witch work. The witch elm is sometimes referred to as all heart, as in she was thrown into a common chest of witch elm.

When a witch desires something that is not hers, she will slip it into her glove. An overwhelming power compels her to take something from a rich man's shelf. I have personally known a nervous young woman who often walked in her sleep. Isn't there something witch-like about a sleepwalker who wanders through the house with matches? The skin of a real witch makes a delicate binding for a book of common prayer. When all the witches in your town have been set on fire Their smoke will fill your mouth It will teach you new words It will tell you what you've done When my brother and I were kids, our family lived for a while in a charming old farmhouse

in Tennessee. We loved exploring its old dusty corners and climbing the apple tree in the backyard. But our favorite thing was the ghost. We called her mother because she seemed so kind and nurturing. Some mornings my brother and I would wake up and on each of our nightstands we'd find a cup that hadn't been there the night before. Mother had left them there, worried that we would get thirsty during the night. She just wanted to take care of us. Among the home's original furnishings was an old antique wooden chair, which we kept against the back of the wall of the living room. You know, we were preoccupied watching TV, playing games, and stuff like that. Each time, though, Mother would inch that chair forward

across the room towards us. Sometimes she would manage to move it all the way to the center of the room. We always felt sad putting it back against that wall. Mother just wanted to be near us. Years later, though, me and my brother, you know, we was doing a lot of research long after we moved out. We found an old newspaper article about the farmhouse original occupant a widow she murdered her two children by giving them each a cup of

poisoned milk before bed damn then she hung herself Wow right the article included the photo of the farmhouse living room with a woman's body hanging from a beam. Beneath her knocked over was that old wind chair placed exactly in the center of the room. Now, did it get colder in here or is it just me? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahadiadiadiadiadiadiadiadiadiadiididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididididid Nå er vi på veien. Hey, Mary's quite contrary. How does your hatred grow? Whisking of snake and rabbit face We're going straight to hell Rosemary, bloody cherries White as your crystal shawl Body, race and life, they'd never go straight to hell This shit that I'm cooking, you better beware

Cause it's wicked, and I will not play what you hold This shit is witch brew, my attitude is fuck you You know, had to bring it one more time I love to make my haters sick Laughing out loud, rolling with chatter My niggas is down with the triple the six Paying attention to folks who be gossiping Constantly keeping my name in they mouth Blin' out smoke and I'm travelin'

Gettin' my money, the hardest little boo in the South The industry dudes make me sick sometimes Be actin' like your shit don't strike like mine But the nigga that I roll with his ass got an Oscar Fuck your opinion, I don't wanna be bothered Everybody know the real G's movin' silence Everybody know they wrote licks, don't tick Everybody know the possibility of violence Everybody know that they don't wanna see me click Most of the time in the studio fresh Cookin' up poison, throwin' a heck

Gettin' some head, countin' the facts High and I pray that you bitches attest My gangsta, hollow tips got you wet Split her, splatter like a painter I don't wanna be like her, I don't wanna be like him I need, bitch, no thank ya My crystal ball showin' I'm the queen Bitch, bow him, I need, bitch, no thank ya My crystal ball showing I'm the queen, bitch, bow down I have the real power to shut your whole world down

Hail Mary's quite contrary How does your hatred grow? With skin of snake and rabbit bait We're going straight to hell Rosemary, bloody cherries What does your crystal show? Body rates and bloody fate Yeah, we're going straight to hell

You know it's more done than I'm making these bitches Might fuck the feds and kill a fraud These bitches gotta get your brand and stay about your business Bust your head and live your indie digits Murk your family, don't leave no witness Chat, bitch, to us, that's in minutes Really wanna play with this bitch, okay Got the gang, I'ma spray so you can get up with me

Got killers on standby, do a drive-by Make your mama cry, cry, nigga, buy red dot on your black eye You gon' die if I try knockin' my guy You a lie plus cause I stay so high In the sky real bitches makin' move minds That is I anything that I want nigga I can buy everybody hate chat bitch And that is why every morning that I wake up I'm lookin' in the mirror Levin' in my sack cause I'm the one that they fear her Open up my eyes now my vision is clearer And she still talkin' shit but nobody done hear her

Put her in the trunk with the pump to her head Got a scab, misled, she done bled, blood and red Fuck her, I don't wanna hear shit, tell the bitch she dead She dead, enough said, I done brought a new Ruger Duke is the shooter, mama told you kill a big kid I'm the tutor, so if your hoes wanna get stoned Mop your ass, got a gun, man boo, we gon' bring the shit to you Witch, I'm ratchet, nigga, right, you ain't, y'all pappy

If you make the wrong move, you gon' lose, got the twos If it's news, I'm trick or happy Hail Mary's quite contrary How does your hatred grow? Whisking of snake and rabbit bits We're going straight to hell Rosemary, bloody cherries What does your crystal show? Body rings and bloody face Yeah, we're going straight to hell Outro Music