Ep. 283: the instruction manual to being a vampire [w/ craig wallwork!]

[00:00:04] Speaker A: What do you guys know about tuberculosis? [00:00:09] Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting. [00:00:11] Speaker C: Doc Hollywood. [00:00:12] Speaker A: Doc Hollywood. Yeah. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Is that what might have been referred to in olden times as consumption? [00:00:22] Speaker A: Sure is. [00:00:23] Speaker B: Is [00:00:23] Speaker A: that what [00:00:24] Speaker B: it is? [00:00:24] Speaker A: It is the consumption, [00:00:26] Speaker B: yeah. [00:00:26] Speaker C: Mark, you might remember this as well. I don't know if it's a bit beyond your time because you're a lot younger than me. We used to have the TB injection at school [00:00:39] Speaker B: for sure. Yes. [00:00:40] Speaker A: Did you? [00:00:41] Speaker C: And before you. Yes. You should have a mark on your arm. [00:00:45] Speaker B: Yes. [00:00:45] Speaker C: And before you went in for the injection, I think it was a few days before they give you the ring of needle, little [00:00:53] Speaker B: pin prick. Yeah. The little patch test for sure. [00:00:55] Speaker C: Yes. And you do that and then if that I think flared up, you had a [00:01:00] Speaker B: natural [00:01:00] Speaker C: immunity. [00:01:01] Speaker A: I do remember that. [00:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah, [00:01:03] Speaker C: yeah, [00:01:03] Speaker A: I remember that. I think we got the test, but I don't think we got the actual like vaccine for it from things that I pretty much charge you like [00:01:11] Speaker B: a grand for it. [00:01:12] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:01:12] Speaker B: right, [00:01:13] Speaker C: yeah. [00:01:13] Speaker A: They're not wasting vaccine on us. Come on. [00:01:16] Speaker C: So what happened was in my school, because I am wall work, I was at the end of the Alphabet, so. [00:01:23] Speaker A: The other end of that. [00:01:24] Speaker C: Exactly. So you had all the Aspinals, all the Adams, all the, you know, whatever going through and they'd all have the injection and they, they sort of over embellished how big the needle was, which was this big. [00:01:36] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:01:37] Speaker C: This [00:01:38] Speaker B: thing. Well, [00:01:40] Speaker C: and it goes into the bone and the injector. The bone. And [00:01:44] Speaker B: I remember that so well. [00:01:46] Speaker C: By the time he got to me, I was like, I'm not having that. I'll go all Doc Hollywood on it. I'm fine. [00:01:54] Speaker A: So, yeah, I'll tough it out [00:01:56] Speaker C: if [00:01:56] Speaker A: the tuberculosis, Tuberculosis comes for me. [00:01:59] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:01:59] Speaker A: That was God's will. [00:02:01] Speaker C: I never had it. [00:02:03] Speaker A: You just didn't. But did [00:02:04] Speaker B: you get, did you go on to get tuberculosis? [00:02:07] Speaker C: I'm here now, [00:02:08] Speaker B: you know what I mean? Yeah. So. [00:02:10] Speaker A: So [00:02:10] Speaker C: there you go, [00:02:11] Speaker A: that herd immunity for [00:02:12] Speaker B: your own research [00:02:12] Speaker A: coming through. [00:02:13] Speaker B: We had the. As I'm sure many other school years did, we had the kind of collective group hysteria that it was causing kids to like have hallucinations, like it was DMT or something. So we had school gym just full of kids just pretending to wig out on gym mats. Yeah, we [00:02:35] Speaker A: talked about this, but I don't, I don't know if you said at the time that it was specifically the tuberculosis in inoculation. That was the thing that caused this, so. [00:02:43] Speaker B: Yep, for sure. [00:02:45] Speaker A: Yes. [00:02:46] Speaker B: And it's, it's, you know, it's a, it's almost like the mark of the beast. If you're a British kid, you've got that. You've [00:02:52] Speaker A: got that [00:02:53] Speaker B: on one of your upper arms. Very. Yeah. [00:02:56] Speaker A: Very interesting. Thank you for that. I love this little cultural exchange that has occurred here. [00:03:02] Speaker C: Can I just add another, just a pentage onto that? There was a state just post having the vaccination where the trend was to pull the scab off each of you. Yeah, that was the thing. [00:03:16] Speaker A: That was [00:03:16] Speaker C: the thing that [00:03:17] Speaker B: went [00:03:17] Speaker C: around [00:03:18] Speaker B: right back here. [00:03:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Everybody just. You go past somebody and yank the scab off. [00:03:23] Speaker A: Oh my God. See, this is why British kids are scary. This is the kind of thing you folks do over there. That's terrifying. [00:03:31] Speaker B: True. But again, you know, just mimetic behaviors pre Internet. [00:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah. That's somehow. You know what I [00:03:38] Speaker B: mean? Just something that just fucking kids used do. Little shits just walking past [00:03:42] Speaker A: across almost a decade between you guys, same exact behaviors. That's kind of [00:03:48] Speaker B: incredible. [00:03:49] Speaker A: Love that stuff. No, please don't apologize. You are. You're working the joag magic today. It's great. So, yeah, tuberculosis. [00:03:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:59] Speaker A: Kind of seems like the big bad in a lot of history and media from the past couple centuries. And there's good reason for that. I just realized I'm not wearing my glasses. I'm like squinting at this thing. There's good reason for that. Tuberculosis. Tuberculosis. Which is apparently hard to say. I've been reading it all day and this is the first time I'm saying it out loud. Tuberculosis is super deadly. When left. [00:04:22] Speaker B: You'll probably get there. Right, you'll probably get there. But I questions before we even start. Is it viral? Is it something you breathe in? Is it something you catch? [00:04:31] Speaker A: It is something you catch. And of course we will get there. But it is not viral. It's bacterial. [00:04:35] Speaker B: Right. [00:04:36] Speaker A: And yes, of course we will go on. According to Michael E. Bell quote, By 1800, 1 in 250 people in the eastern United States was dying of pulmonary tuberculosis. Pulmonary of course being the lungs, accounting for nearly 25% of all deaths. [00:04:57] Speaker B: Huge. [00:04:57] Speaker A: One in four people who died in the eastern United States in 1800 died of tuberculosis. And according to PBS's the Forgotten Plague quote, by the dawn of the 19th century, tuberculosis had killed one in seven of all the people who had ever lived. [00:05:18] Speaker B: Huge. [00:05:19] Speaker A: Huge. Yeah. I think to this day it's still the. Like it has killed the most people in history of [00:05:27] Speaker B: any disease. [00:05:27] Speaker A: Of any disease. [00:05:28] Speaker B: Incredible. Incredible. [00:05:31] Speaker A: I can't remember what the second one was, but yeah. [00:05:32] Speaker B: I seem to remember being a plot point in red Dead Redemption 2. One of the greatest games of all time. [00:05:37] Speaker A: Well, that would make sense. Some of the [00:05:39] Speaker B: camp gets black lung, as they call it. [00:05:41] Speaker A: Oh, okay. They called the TV the black lung. Interesting. [00:05:45] Speaker B: They did. They did. [00:05:46] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:47] Speaker C: Do you have any facts about badgers as well, going forward? [00:05:51] Speaker A: Did you say badgers? [00:05:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:05:54] Speaker A: I don't [00:05:55] Speaker B: know. Spreaders, TB spreaders, vermin. [00:05:56] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, [00:05:57] Speaker A: yeah, [00:05:57] Speaker C: yeah. They, they. They were heavy on the tv. [00:06:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:00] Speaker A: Badgers. [00:06:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:06:02] Speaker A: Well, listen, we don't have them, so that's probably why it didn't come up in my research here. [00:06:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I [00:06:09] Speaker B: think you [00:06:09] Speaker C: do. [00:06:11] Speaker A: Think we do. We don't have badgers. No. I've told you this before because I always. The two things that I want to see every time that I'm over there. Badgers and hedgehogs. [00:06:22] Speaker B: Yes. [00:06:22] Speaker A: Because we don't have those things. Very [00:06:24] Speaker B: unlikely you're ever going to see a hedgehog. Now [00:06:27] Speaker A: why is that? No, don't tell [00:06:29] Speaker B: me. Dropping off me. You're never gonna see. [00:06:33] Speaker A: I don't like it anyway. So the way the TV killed people was slow and horrible. We've all seen that moment in period movies, right? How do we [00:06:44] Speaker B: know [00:06:44] Speaker A: a character has tb? For those who are listening, [00:06:54] Speaker B: nothing. Tis nothing. Tis but a cold. [00:06:59] Speaker A: I'd have to make this a clip, but for those that are listening to this, both men here have responded the same way by miming, you know, the moment where they. The character coughs into a handkerchief, then removes it from their mouth and reveals. And the physician comes. Red spot of blood. [00:07:15] Speaker B: Plenty of sunlight. And cream and butter. [00:07:18] Speaker A: Yes. [00:07:19] Speaker C: And high altitude. [00:07:20] Speaker A: High altitude. Yes. We will get there, [00:07:23] Speaker B: take her to the Swiss Alps, [00:07:24] Speaker C: stick them in the buttons. They'll be fine in a week. [00:07:28] Speaker A: Yes, you're right there. Absolutely. [00:07:32] Speaker B: Tb. Doesn't work. She dies. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Doesn't work. She dies. Yes. As soon as we see that red spot of blood, we know that that character is not long for this world. They've got [00:07:43] Speaker B: accurate symptoms. [00:07:44] Speaker A: Consumption. We'll get there, Mark. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:50] Speaker A: They called it this because one of the results of contracting the disease is extreme weight loss. The wasting away experienced by the afflicted, making them look as if the disease is literally consuming them from the inside out. [00:08:02] Speaker B: Nice, nice, nice. [00:08:04] Speaker A: Meanwhile, their skin turns ashen, causing people to refer to the illness as the white plague. It can attack all different parts of your body, but as I said, was particularly famous for beating the absolute out of your lungs. Now, I've got a Charles Dickens quote here describing death by tuberculosis that. Marco, I thought you might like to read for us. [00:08:27] Speaker B: Beautiful. [00:08:28] Speaker A: Yes. [00:08:29] Speaker B: All right. Don't take our word for it. These are the words of one Charles Dickens, who says, there is a dread disease which so prepares its victim, as it were, for death, which so refines it of its grosser aspect and throws around familiar looks, unearthly indications of the coming change. A dread disease in which the struggle between soul and body is so gradual, quiet and solemn, and the results so sure that day by day and grain by grain, the mortal part wastes and withers away, so that the spirit grows light and sanguine with its lightning load and feeling immortality at hand, deems it but a new term of mortal life, A disease in which death and life are so strangely blended that death takes the glow and hue of lie and life, the gaunt and grisly form of death, a disease which medicine never cured, wealth never warded off, or poverty could boast exemption from, which sometimes moves in giant strides and sometimes at a tardy, sluggish pace. But slow or quick is ever sure and certain. [00:09:43] Speaker C: Beautifully was in the room. Richard Byrne was in the room. [00:09:49] Speaker A: Oh, I'll [00:09:49] Speaker B: take that all day. I'll take that all day long. [00:09:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, appropriately dismal and dark description there. So [00:09:59] Speaker B: not much of a. It's. You don't. You don't walk it off. [00:10:02] Speaker A: You do not walk it off. Yeah, that's basically the short version of what Dickens has said here. You do not walk this off slowly or quickly, you will eventually die of this. In fact, I learned that I. I've heard the term, like, walking pneumonia before. Have you heard that phrase, like. No, maybe not. Well, there's a walking tuberculosis, too, and I presume they mean the same thing. You can have walking tuberculosis, which basically means you have it, but you don't show symptoms until suddenly you do and then you die. Which is essentially. Also I read recently, like, the book Typhoid Mary by Anthony Bourdain, and that's like. Essentially what she had with this, with the typhoid was just like she was walking around carrying it, but just. [00:10:52] Speaker C: Presumably you're contagious at [00:10:53] Speaker A: that [00:10:54] Speaker C: stage. [00:10:54] Speaker A: Super contagious. Yeah. [00:10:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:10:56] Speaker A: It just, you know, you don't get sick. Sick from it, weirdly. But almost predictably, this became sort of romanticized as well. If you would like to open that link that I sent to you here. [00:11:12] Speaker B: Society [00:11:13] Speaker A: loves nothing more than a skinny, sickly woman, for one. And a lot of harsh in the late 1800s and early 1900s depicted pale women dying of tuberculosis. If you would scroll down to the 1, 2, 3, the third picture here, Craig, if you want to describe what you see in this pink TV chic. Yes. [00:11:38] Speaker C: Yeah. She's. There's a lady. It looks like it's a day bed and she's draped over it and she's looking a bit sort of Brian Cox. She's probably just about to tell us that the universe is collapsing. And she's. Yeah, she's got a frill around her neck. Lots of what looks like clown paint on her face. [00:12:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:10] Speaker C: And hovering over her is death, one assumes, in some sort of spectral form, but. And again, very elevated position. So one assumes they've. They've taken her up into the mountains to try and clear her lungs out. But she's. Yeah. Oh, [00:12:25] Speaker A: yeah, good. Good call. [00:12:27] Speaker C: Yeah. Next to her is a little table and it's got the usual apparel that you find in hospitals, which is a Lucas Aid and grapes. [00:12:37] Speaker B: It's true. [00:12:38] Speaker A: What is [00:12:41] Speaker B: Lucas at the elixir of life. The elixir of hell. Because [00:12:44] Speaker C: I'll just get rid of everything. Yeah. [00:12:49] Speaker B: Again, Craig, I'm certain this will ring a bell. So if you were ill as a kid and you had to take a couple of days off school, perhaps your nan might bring round bottle of Lucozade. Right, [00:13:03] Speaker C: yeah. [00:13:03] Speaker A: Okay. [00:13:04] Speaker B: And I think back in the day, thinking glass bottle, and am I right? It used to have like a. Like an orange kind of crinkly wrap. [00:13:11] Speaker C: Cellophane. Yeah, [00:13:12] Speaker B: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:13:13] Speaker C: Did have that orange cellophane around it because you used to stick it in the sort of pharmacy window and it stopped the sunlight from penetrating into the liquid and then. And causing it to go off. So hence why we had the [00:13:27] Speaker B: beautiful. And I. I don't think. I can't. I don't think there's a comparative flavor as proper medicinal orange. Radioactive orange flavor. Yeah, I've never. Oh, yeah, yeah. Nothing like [00:13:45] Speaker C: it. You're pissing Tango for [00:13:47] Speaker B: completely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:13:50] Speaker A: I can almost. Well, yes, lovely. Well described there, Craig. That's exactly what's going on in that photo. And there came to be this weird class of association with tuberculosis. As Imogen Clark wrote, quote, when TB attacked young women of the upper classes, it was treated decidedly differently than when it struck the poor. Unlike other serious illnesses of the time, pulmonary tuberculosis was associated with fragility and sexual attractiveness. [00:14:22] Speaker B: I see [00:14:22] Speaker A: the consumptive appearance entailed dramatically pale skin, an ethereal thinness with red cheeks and a feverish glow. This became the defining fashionable aesthetic of the time, with women powdering their faces, some even using chemicals Such as arsenic, to achieve a paler complexion. [00:14:40] Speaker C: Wow. [00:14:41] Speaker A: Isn't that bananas? [00:14:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:14:44] Speaker C: I've kind of got that TB look, though, don't you [00:14:46] Speaker A: think? You're like, already, you just need a little [00:14:49] Speaker B: super attractive. [00:14:52] Speaker A: Well, I'm not like [00:14:56] Speaker B: my lady. Analogous to kind of. I don't know. If hair and chic was a thing in the States, it certainly was over here. [00:15:05] Speaker A: You know, [00:15:05] Speaker B: supermodels, all ribs and hip bones, jeans hanging off front cover of Vogue and whatnot. Certainly, again, history rhymes, you know. [00:15:16] Speaker A: Exactly. But [00:15:18] Speaker C: the weird thing is because, just to interject, the weird thing is in the Victorian age, probably Edwardian age as well, that for you to be wealthy, you had to be overweight, [00:15:28] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, there's definitely a little bit of a contradiction here in these. Well, and, you know, it's about what was happening at the time, right? And you know, as that Dickens quote points out, like this, tuberculosis came for everybody. It was just blamed on different things, depending on what class you were in, if it happened to you. And so while, you know, there was some, like, always this kind of sense of, like, oh, if you're like, big, that means you can afford to eat. And like that, once everybody in the upper class starts dying of this stuff, it's like, what's good about this? Actually, that's super sexy. We're really into that. And the popularity of this look was echoed in fashion and art. Corsets and big skirts made women look skinnier, sicker, and in fact, made them physically weak by compressing and displacing their internal organs, mimicking the effects of the disease. Stage performances like operas and plays, as well as novels and poetry. Poetry told tales of these thin and beautiful women wasting away coughing those scarlet spots into their hankies. Indeed, this trope we see show up time and time again is a remnant of this romantic portrait of tuberculosis in the upper classes. There's nothing more tragically beautiful than a white woman wasting away in her prime while a man pines for her and mourns what could have been. Still, [00:16:53] Speaker C: for women with wasting disease, [00:16:56] Speaker A: it's just like, there's just something about it that's so hot. You know, even Lord Byron once said, quote, how pale I look. I should like, I think, to die of consumption. Because then the women would all say, see that? Poor Byron, how interesting he looks in dying. So white people beauty standards stay unhinged. But a big part of why this happened is that we didn't really know how to treat tuberculosis. We've talked a lot on JOAG about just how Modern. Modern medicine is. We're talking about thinking [00:17:31] Speaker B: out loud. Apologies to cut. To cut across is. What am I trying to articulate? Is that TB chic that we are speaking of now? Is that the. Is that, I wonder, the precursor to eating disorders, man to social. And the. The. The. The kind of the male gaze being seen by. By women to favor emaciated beauty? I wonder, is there anything before TV that. That. It's [00:18:11] Speaker A: a fair question. I mean, I think, you know, obviously this is not what I researched, but I think there's something to that combined with obviously, like, thinness and whatnot being associated with, like, juvenile bodies and, you know, the idea that men want, like, youthful bodies as well. But, yeah, maybe the extremes of this, you know, obviously earlier than that, people didn't necessarily think starvation was hot. I have not heard of any other period in history where they were like, yeah, the royals really want to be £80. So there may be something to that. I don't know. It'd be worth looking into, seeing if someone's written a book on it. [00:18:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I reckon they were all banging each other senseless during the Black Plague. Wow, look how sexy you are. [00:19:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a. You never know how a beauty standard is gonna arise. [00:19:09] Speaker B: Yeah, [00:19:10] Speaker A: but, yeah, I have not heard that about other plagues and things of that nature that it suddenly changed everyone to being, like, that sexy. But, you know, also, like, when you think of something like the Black Plague, like, it obviously, you know, hit the poor more than it did the wealthy. And so, yeah, if it had ravaged the royals just as. As much as it did everyone else, maybe this would have been a thing. You know, people love boils. [00:19:39] Speaker C: Who doesn't love a good boil? [00:19:41] Speaker A: Oh, come on. But, okay, anyways, as I was saying, we talk a lot about how modern. Modern medicine is and that it's been less than a century, really, of having most of the understandings that are at the center of medical science now. We've only really had, like, good medical science for a very short period of time, and it's obviously always evolving and changing as well. But, you know, like, when President Garfield died in 1881, it was basically because we were still arguing over whether germs existed not that long ago. And the world was full of flim flam men and snake oil salesmen, and even folks doing their darndest to find a cure were basically just guessing, you know, observing things and, like, hoping that maybe if we try this, it's gonna work. You know, until the late 1880s, people weren't sure if the illness was genetic or contagious, because obviously it turned up in families a lot, right? An entire family would get sick. So they were like, maybe it's passed down, you know, maybe there's something in the blood that makes you catch this. When really it was like, they're just, you know, all in the same house, hunkered together. So now when we see like a bunch of TB riddled patients shoved into a cramped sanatorium and old photos and stuff like that, we're like, that's a death trap. Why didn't they know that was a death trap? Because they didn't know that you passed it from person to person. They thought it might be something that was just like in you and then it manifests at some point in your life. When Dr. Robert Koch made the discovery of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium in 1882, he and others were also noticing that hygiene seemed to be connected to whether or not TB spread as such, throughout the US There were huge public health campaigns to try to communicate that cleanliness could probably help you stop the spread of tuberculosis. And I can't remember what book I read this in, but I saw it in some other stuff that I researched as well. But I remember years ago reading something that talked about that thing where people would go to the mountains, like in that picture and whatnot, and they believed that there was special air up there that cured tuberculosis. But what was really happening was that people were leaving crowded cities and cramped conditions for wide open spaces where they weren't in contact with a bunch of other people who also had tuberculosis. And that was actually making them feel better, not some, like, special magic air. Turns out if the air is not filled with the coughs and spit of consumptive folks, you're less likely to catch the consumption. Imagine that. [00:22:30] Speaker C: It's [00:22:30] Speaker B: far less sexy when you put it like that. [00:22:33] Speaker A: I mean, you know, rosy cheeks come at a high price. But as a. Oh, were you going to say something? [00:22:41] Speaker C: I was gonna say that, you know, I, I think you, if you look like Brian Cox as well, I think you [00:22:47] Speaker A: get a lot of mileage [00:22:48] Speaker C: out [00:22:48] Speaker A: of that as a little like, aside to that. That probably is more interesting to me and other listeners, like, say, our pal Alicia, who live in Southern California. This is actually how the Southern California tourism industry started. There's an interesting short PBS documentary I linked in the blog and it'll be in the show notes as well. But essential, influential people moved to California when they got tuberculosis and they found that their symptoms improved greatly and they Were like, this is great. Must be the sun and the air, which are free commodities that we can market to people to get them to come here. And it costs us nothing to do that. That a few days decades later, LA's air was so polluted, people were dropping dead in the streets. Is ironic because in the early 20th century, they were building these incredibly fancy sanatoriums that advertise gorgeous accommodations and facilities where you could play croque and tennis and go for walks. And rich people flocked to these places to try to treat their tb, sending postcards to their friends and families depicting their wonderful surroundings. And this gave Southern California a reputation for being this beautiful, clean destination, causing tourism to continue far beyond our finally finding a cure and making these sanatoriums unnecessary. [00:24:08] Speaker B: And is that a place that we've got to. Is it curable now or is it like rabies? Like, by the time it shows [00:24:13] Speaker A: up, we'll get there. But yes, it's [00:24:14] Speaker B: curable. [00:24:14] Speaker A: There's a reason none of us have it. [00:24:17] Speaker B: Great point. [00:24:18] Speaker A: And that you got those shots [00:24:20] Speaker B: for [00:24:20] Speaker A: it when you were in school. But yes, we will get into that in a bit. As I said, we didn't find out what caused tuberculosis until the late 1800s, and then there wouldn't be a vaccine against it until the 1920s. And then there wasn't a straight up cure until the discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin in 1944. So that basically all of this is happening and it's not till 1944 that once you've gotten it, you can cure it, right? You can prevent it as early as the 1920s, but you can't cure it until the 1940s. But this disease has been around in one form or another for some 70,000 years, according to scientists with early related mycobacterium going back as far as 150 million years, it's thought that early hominids living 3 million years ago may have been infected with an early version of the tuberculosis bacterium. And we have records of people in Egypt, China and India discussing what we'd now recognize, recognize as TB from 2 to 3,000 years ago. So we know this is basically as long as there's been humans. There has been tuberculosis, but no cure for it till 1944. A disease that's been around that long is going to have a lot of different explanations and a lot of different attempts and treatment at treatments and cures. One of the most popular theories in Europe in the Middle Ages through the Renaissance was what they called the King's evil. They thought that if you were afflicted with the disease, the only way you could cure it would be from the touch of the King or the Queen. As the last English monarch to carry out this tradition was Queen Anne in 1712. [00:26:08] Speaker C: I was gonna say. Can you expound on the word touch? Is that a polite euphemism? [00:26:14] Speaker A: I think it's quite literal. Just a little. [00:26:16] Speaker C: Oh, is it like a literal touch? Literal [00:26:20] Speaker A: touch, yeah. So they were doing this, like I said, in England till 1712, but in France, they actually kept doing this until 1825. And [00:26:31] Speaker C: people. [00:26:32] Speaker A: Just royals touching people to get rid of tuberculosis, which is crazy because. [00:26:37] Speaker B: So what happens? [00:26:41] Speaker A: Listen, I'm not from Europe, but have you ever heard of the royal dying of tuberculosis? [00:26:47] Speaker B: Nah. [00:26:48] Speaker A: So if it feels like a new poem. None of the big ones. [00:26:52] Speaker B: How would they explain that? [00:26:53] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:26:54] Speaker C: yeah. I don't remember. Madness of King George. That's the only one I'm going back to. [00:26:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't. [00:27:01] Speaker C: That [00:27:01] Speaker A: wasn't. That wasn't tb? [00:27:02] Speaker C: No. [00:27:03] Speaker B: Syphilis, wasn't it? Syphilis, [00:27:04] Speaker C: yeah. [00:27:05] Speaker B: Gonorrhea, something like that. [00:27:06] Speaker C: Yeah. I think that's because of all the touching. [00:27:09] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, this is how eventually you're gonna get there. So that's what. That's the euphemistic kind of touching that caused that one. But. Yeah, so that was kind of one of the popular ways in Europe. They were trying to get rid of it. But obviously, keep in mind, there were also sciency types trying to find actual cures, as certainly they noticed that getting a boop from the king wasn't doing anything to relieve people of their consumption. So there were, like, people noticing, like that. That's. That's. And trying to figure out other things. In early New England, it was often thought that there were supernatural reasons for most illnesses, whether it was the doing of witches or God just having chosen you at birth to be fated to die horribly. Environmental factors often weren't the first thing people jumped to when someone came down with a terrible illness. Did you have a thought, Mark? [00:28:04] Speaker B: No, no, I did not. I just. Speaking of. There is no source at all to support my assertion that King George III had syphilis or gonorrhea. [00:28:17] Speaker A: Oh, what did he [00:28:17] Speaker B: have? Nonsense. Unclear, but was not what I claimed it was. [00:28:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I think Ben Franklin had the syphilis. [00:28:26] Speaker B: Oh, there we [00:28:26] Speaker C: go. Al Capone. [00:28:28] Speaker A: Al Capone. Yeah. Al Capone had the syphilis. There's a. There's quite a few of the famous folks who had that one. Just. [00:28:36] Speaker C: Just to just to tie it in. Slightly tenuous link here. I think Bram Stoker also had syphilis. [00:28:42] Speaker B: No, [00:28:44] Speaker C: because I think that was a theory behind what it was like an allegory for venereal disease. [00:28:51] Speaker B: Sure, [00:28:52] Speaker A: interesting [00:28:52] Speaker C: is one theory, but [00:28:54] Speaker A: we will get [00:28:54] Speaker B: there indeed. Very, [00:28:57] Speaker A: very interesting but. Well, let's see there. Where am I? Oh, of course there are heavily moralized reasons that people thought as well it was thought that you could get the disease from overindulgence in things like sex, food, alcohol or tobacco. You could get it from unconventional behavior. [00:29:22] Speaker B: I'm [00:29:22] Speaker A: sure there's a wide range of people of things that are under that. Yeah, exactly. Mucking about from exercising too little or from liking to dance too much. In 1892 a physician wrote the constitutional pre predisposition to tuberculosis appears to be built up with equal certainty by impure drunkenness and want among the poor and by dissipation and enervating luxuries among the rich. So there's like again like, oh, it doesn't strike. They both get it but for like different reasons. You know, they don't get them for the same failings, tuberculosis attacks, for, you know, different moral problems. And like I said, there were of course those who took a more scientific approach and soon there was something environmental going on. From bad soil to cold to dampness, all of which I think are fair guesses. Even to this day people tend to think that you can catch a cold from actually being cold, which is absolutely not true. [00:30:28] Speaker B: Obviously not a problem for anyone, right? [00:30:31] Speaker A: What? Oh yeah, [00:30:32] Speaker B: obviously not. Not a problem for Craig or. But yeah, go out here, catch your death. [00:30:36] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Cold air is not a virus or a bacterium, but it's just one of those bits of folk wisdom left over from we didn't understand why bad shit happened to us. That is stupid. Stuck all these years. And a funny irony of that old chestnut is the main reason why we get sick when it gets cold is not because of going outside in the cold, but because we spend more time inside when it's cold, spreading infections to each other. So we still have these kinds of like superstitious beliefs that we don't question about things. But like I said, you did the best you could. You know, doctors didn't know shit. They were making observations and trying to connect them to their understandings of the world and developing treatments that seemed to make sense. So some of these treatments included bleeding, blistering, climatology, diet, drug regimens, exercise, leeching, open air treatment, open health resorts, opium poultices, purgatives and emetics. Rest cure. Rest cure. Sanatoriums and voyages for health. They were really throwing everything at the wall and seeing all at [00:31:44] Speaker B: the same time all of those [00:31:45] Speaker A: things. Yeah, maybe, maybe we send you on a boat like I don't [00:31:50] Speaker B: them full of opium. Right? [00:31:52] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:31:53] Speaker B: go on, go on a cruise. [00:31:56] Speaker A: And while as bell. Right. [00:32:01] Speaker B: You gotta [00:32:01] Speaker C: get that in. And so yeah, bloodletting. [00:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:32:04] Speaker C: all those, [00:32:06] Speaker A: you know, [00:32:06] Speaker C: like just, just an aside again I'm sure this. And again this might need to be fact checked. But they believed that when women had hysteria, [00:32:17] Speaker A: right. [00:32:18] Speaker C: The cure to hysteria was to insert fingers in the. [00:32:22] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:32:23] Speaker B: indeed [00:32:24] Speaker C: that was, that's, [00:32:25] Speaker A: that was [00:32:26] Speaker C: a way of that. That is a thing, isn't it? [00:32:28] Speaker A: Yes, yeah. So, yes. [00:32:30] Speaker C: So as you say, doctors knew. All [00:32:33] Speaker A: right. Exactly the last thing that would cure my hysteria, I think. [00:32:38] Speaker C: Exactly, exactly. [00:32:42] Speaker A: So, yeah, we're also at a time, which I guess we kind of always are in some ways where people are trying to understand what exactly death is. When does it occur, like physically, you know, what happens to the person, the soul. As Margaret Locke wrote in her book Twice Dead, quote. For several centuries, centuries, the heart was usually understood as the organ that governed human life and all vital principles. So basically all of you is bundled up in there. It's not just this body part that keeps you physically going, but it's where your you ness lies. And this extends to the blood which was thought to contain something of life's essence. People were observant enough to notice that if you lost a lot of blood, you died. They thus reasoned that blood is powerful and contains something of the soul in it. And because blood is full of the living soul, well my friends, that means that the dead or the undead must crave it. And this is where [00:33:51] Speaker B: it's very smooth. [00:33:53] Speaker C: Well, [00:33:54] Speaker B: so smooth. [00:33:55] Speaker A: Thank you. You see, it was thought that a corpse wasn't fully dead until it was dry and dead. If a body wasn't stiff enough, or if there was still liquid blood remaining in the heart, it was thought to be incompletely dead. It was not widely understood in the late 18th century that there are some processes of decomposition that can actually cause blood to relique. And honestly I didn't know that either. So if I came across an old ass corpse but its heart was bleeding, I'd be a little perturbed by that too, realistically. But I like to think my mind wouldn't immediately go to the assumption made by these folks in New England. And do either of you want to guess what they thought it meant? If a corpse had liquid blood on the heart. [00:34:42] Speaker B: Witches? [00:34:44] Speaker A: Try again. [00:34:46] Speaker B: Vampirism. [00:34:48] Speaker A: Vampires, Bruh. [00:34:50] Speaker B: That's [00:34:50] Speaker A: right. You see, some folks came to believe that consumption was not a thing physical affliction, but a spiritual one. One that came to a person through some form of visitation. This evil entity preys upon the consumptive person, draining them of their lifeblood. And if a corpse is found with a heart that still bleeds, it's because they're still feeding upon someone, a relative perhaps, Allowing them to rise from the dead each night, nourished by the blood of the living. The only way to stop the process would be would be to burn the heart and sometimes other organs of the deceased. At which point it was thought that the rest of the family would be relieved of the disease at last. Sometimes they would eat the ashes or stand around the burning remains and inhale the smoke in the belief that it would restore them. And this is all to your point, Craig. Very Dracula, when it comes down to it. You know, poor Lucy Westenra having the life sucked out of her, becoming pale and thin, unable to eat while the vampire grows strong from her lifeblood. And then after death, she too becomes a vampire. And the only way to stop her from feeding on the local children is to destroy her heart to drive a stake through it. Interesting. So while pretty much every culture has some version of vampire lore, according to research done by the American Lung association, the specific version of the pale, gaunt undead being who feasted on the blood of the living really comes to be in the 19th century. And indeed Dracula was written in 1897 while Europe was getting absolutely rocked by tuberculosis. The most famous real life story from this moment of vampire panic in New England was that of a young woman named Mercy Brown, known to her friends and family as Lena, who died in Exeter, Rhode island in 1892 and came from a family fully riddled with tuberculosis. She was one of seven children born to a respected farmer named George Brown and his wife, Mary Eliza. Mary Eliza was the first to die in 1883, followed by their daughter Mary Olive a year later at the age of 20. Before dying, she talked of having horrible dreams and said she felt a crushing weight drawing the life out of her as she slept. Lena died in January of 1892, at which point her brother, 24 year old Edwin, was also sick. He had gone with his wife to Colorado Springs, which is west coast mountains, all of that stuff, in hopes that the western heir would do him so good. But returned to Rhode island upon Lina's death and his health actually had been Improving while he was out west, but he quickly worsened once he came back home. It is said that in his sleep, he would call out things like, she was here. She wants me to come with her, and she haunts me. So George's neighbors came to him and were like, listen, you've clearly got a vampire feeding on your family, and if you want to save Edwin and not spread this to the rest of us, you're gonna have to dig up your dead wife and daughters and see if any of them still have blood in their organs. So on March 17, 1892, he and some other local men exhumed the bodies of the Brown women. Mary Eliza and Mary Olive had both been dead for going on a decade, and their bodies were very well decomposed at this point. Lena, on the other hand, had not decomposed to their liking. Now, she had only died two months earlier, and it was March in New England, so needless to say, it was cold as fuck. So it makes perfect sense that her body had not decomposed a whole heck of a lot. Freezing things preserves them. But that was not a good enough explanation for the men of Exeter. When they saw that there was blood in Lena's heart, they set to pulling out her heart and her liver and then took those organs and burned them on a stone. They then mixed the ashes of the organs with a tonic, which they gave to Edwin to drink. Unfortunately for Edwin, vampires aren't real, and he died anyway two months later. And by 1899, all but one of George Brown's children had died of tuberculosis. And actually, that one lived to be like 79, which is pretty impressive for someone born in the 19th century. Perhaps because of the complete failure of these ritual burnings to do jack shit for sufferers of tuberculosis, the belief in vampires died off in the region pretty soon after that, as an article from the Boston Globe in January of 1896 wrote. I also like another Boston Globe quote that just points out the absurdity outright. The headline here is, vampires in Rhode Island Strange survival of a Grisly Superstition in New England. And the article begins, respectable people digging up the bodies of defunct relatives and burning their hearts. The belief is that persons dead of consumption leave their graves and suck the blood of members of their own families, dooming to like fate. [00:40:05] Speaker B: Well, that's a simp that they called that a symptom of tb. Vampirism. Just waking up from the dead. [00:40:10] Speaker A: No, they said vampirism caused. [00:40:13] Speaker B: I see, I see, I see. [00:40:14] Speaker A: It is. As [00:40:15] Speaker B: opposed to the other way around. Yeah, [00:40:16] Speaker A: yeah. It is the result of a vampire sucking your lifeblood out of you. Yeah, good as guess as any, I guess. So it's pretty clear that whoever wrote that article thought that these folks were looney tunes. But Exeter had not been the only town taken by the superstition. As they attempted to grapple with this population ravaging scourge, it was happening all over New England. In 1990, a group of kids playing near a gravel mine in Connecticut stumbled upon what ended up being a bunch of unmarked graves. One boy finding a skull there. And the cops were worried at first that they might have actually uncovered the work of serial killer Michael Ross, who had been working locally. They thought that maybe it just tossed all the bodies here and those kids had stumbled upon him. But they soon realized these bones were over a century old. They'd actually uncovered a farm cemetery from the colonial period, which was not necessarily unusual. These kinds of small cemeteries litter New England. And this cemetery wasn't particularly remarkable until they came across what they labeled burial number four. Four. It was one of just two stone crips. And when they uncovered it, they found a coffin painted red and a pair of feet. When they uncovered the rest of the ground, they found that the body had been completely rearranged, the corpse beheaded. Among other oddities, the skeleton had been arranged almost like a Jolly Roger, the skulling crossbones flag that we associate with pirates. Assessing the remains, they found that various injuries and decapitation had occurred about five years after the corpse had been buried, and also noted that the coffin had been intentionally smashed. It was when someone at the National Museum of Health and medicine in D.C. made a connection to the so called Jewett City vampires that things started to come together. In Jewett City, Connecticut In 1854, several bodies were exhumed as townspeople feared vampires were climbing out of their graves to feast upon the living. Griswold, where the corpse had been found, was very close to Jewett City and had, from what they could tell, been buried and exhumed around the same time that the panic there had happened. And the strange arrangement from the skeleton likely came from people just digging around in its body, trying to get to the heart as it was decomposing. So. Well, as I said before, there's been vampire lore and cultures around the world forever. There's a very good chance that the ones we've come to know and love have their roots in the weird romanticization of symptoms of tuberculosis and our complete lack of understanding of the disease in the late 19th century. [00:42:57] Speaker C: Wow. [00:42:59] Speaker A: Kind of wild, right? [00:43:02] Speaker C: Yeah. Wow. Okay. [00:43:05] Speaker B: It's an eye opener. [00:43:06] Speaker A: It's an eye opener. I learned a lot about tuberculosis today. [00:43:11] Speaker C: You did? That is phenomenal. I. Do you do this on a regular basis? This much research. Wow. [00:43:18] Speaker B: She does. I do not. We. [00:43:21] Speaker C: No, I covered [00:43:22] Speaker B: that. [00:43:22] Speaker A: This is why we do it every two weeks. [00:43:25] Speaker B: Yeah. See, we've been through a few kind of cycles, kind of eras, because we've been going for about six years and the first couple of years it was a little bit lighter, I found. Is that accurate, Corrigan? Yeah, [00:43:43] Speaker A: maybe a little bit. Talk [00:43:44] Speaker B: about a haunted boat and talk about a murder. [00:43:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:49] Speaker B: But I don't know. Something evolved, man. And now it's very, very in depth. [00:43:56] Speaker C: It's deep. [00:43:57] Speaker B: Talk about disease. Yeah. [00:43:58] Speaker A: It's [00:43:59] Speaker B: deep dive. Yeah. On your part. I still talk about. I still. I. I'm [00:44:02] Speaker A: still talking about a murder. Someone suitcase. [00:44:05] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm more vibes based as opposed to hard research on a Sunday. You [00:44:11] Speaker A: know, listen, this one, you know, if people are interested in more about this, my source list is extensive on this one, so check out the show notes or the blog because there is more that I didn't even get to, but there's like 15 sources right there that you can read on this. And it is fascinating. [00:44:29] Speaker B: Unreal. [00:44:30] Speaker C: The weird thing is that the. The way you described a vampire, and it only occurred to me then that how similar the vampire and the zombie is in its [00:44:43] Speaker B: kind of DNA. Sure. [00:44:44] Speaker C: It rises from the dead. [00:44:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:48] Speaker C: It is dead. [00:44:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:49] Speaker C: It's the undead, isn't it? They go out and they search for blood. They search to feed on the living. [00:44:57] Speaker B: Contagion. They can spread themselves. They can. [00:44:59] Speaker C: Exactly. Yeah. You bite, they become one. [00:45:03] Speaker A: Right. [00:45:04] Speaker C: Very similar DNA. [00:45:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So [00:45:08] Speaker C: it's interesting to understand what came first, the vampire or the zombie. [00:45:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:45:13] Speaker C: In popular culture, I would assume, based on the fact that I think you've obviously articulated perfectly the sort of vampire law, you know, that started in, I think your timeline was about 1800. [00:45:29] Speaker A: Yeah. In the general, like 1790 is where we really get like this tuberculosis thing. And then like the panics about it. And then the late 1800s is when like the vampire as we know it. Yeah. Becomes a thing. [00:45:44] Speaker C: And I think in sort of European law that went further back to sort of mid-1600s in like Croatia. [00:45:54] Speaker A: Yeah. That's. There's like a whole bunch of like, sort of similar kinds of things. And like I said, tuberculosis has been with us for ever. But yeah. Similar kinds of lore in Europe that, like you said, they go back around like the 1600s, essentially. [00:46:10] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And Serbia and places like that. The weird thing was with that when the. The. I think some of the. I might be going. I'm going again off memory, but I think some of the stuff that happened was the graves were very shallow, so they're like two feet deep. [00:46:29] Speaker A: Right. [00:46:30] Speaker C: So as a consequence of heat added to the decomposition, you would open up a coffin largely two day, three days down the line, it'd be decomposed quicker, whereas you went further down six feet, that body would be preserved more. So there was a theory that they were still walking dead [00:46:52] Speaker A: right. At [00:46:53] Speaker C: that stage because they looked. Okay. [00:46:57] Speaker A: Right. [00:46:57] Speaker C: They looked. They didn't look too bad. They weren't, you know, completely Brian Cox. They were kind of more, you know. So. Yeah. [00:47:06] Speaker A: Somewhere in the process. [00:47:07] Speaker C: Yeah. Maybe the other one. [00:47:09] Speaker B: By the way, he's a big fan. He [00:47:11] Speaker C: is. I. I know he is [00:47:12] Speaker B: following [00:47:13] Speaker C: you on [00:47:14] Speaker A: Blue [00:47:14] Speaker C: sky. So you can. I see, this is. This is the thing with me. I go very logical on everything. [00:47:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:25] Speaker C: I have to find a logical route to everything. [00:47:28] Speaker A: Right. [00:47:29] Speaker C: So I'm thinking in. In a time whereby, you know, myth, mythology, you know, and anything dark, you know, it was the devil and witches, the likelihood is that they would create this hysteria that somebody had actually risen from the dead and was plaguing a family. Knocking on doors. And then they said. And the. The wife would say, that was my husband at the door. Now she's obviously suffering from bereavement and potentially hallucinating slightly. And because of. Through a grief, she sees it. They think it's. It's. I think there's a guy called. I don't know what his first name is, but I think his surname was Grando. And they believed that he sort of resurrected and was going around and knocking on doors. And then a couple of days later, the people who he knocked on the door to would die. So they assumed [00:48:35] Speaker A: that [00:48:35] Speaker C: he was the one doing it to go to the grave, open the grave, look at him, and he's perfectly fine because he's six feet under. [00:48:42] Speaker A: Right. [00:48:43] Speaker C: And they would assume that that was it. So they get a stick of Hawthorne, whack it into his heart, you know, do all this different thing. And there would still be blood settled there. [00:48:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:53] Speaker C: Because it's not com. You know, blood settles, it drops, doesn't it? That's why the skin goes black. [00:49:00] Speaker A: Yes, yes, [00:49:03] Speaker B: that's the one. There [00:49:03] Speaker C: you [00:49:03] Speaker B: go. [00:49:04] Speaker C: Yeah. So that. That they were just sort of basically, you know, stirring that. [00:49:10] Speaker A: Right. [00:49:11] Speaker C: So part of me thinks, yeah, you know, science, we can look at it now and say, maybe it wasn't somebody rising up, you know, and. Right. But there's also side of me that wants to believe it. [00:49:23] Speaker A: Right. [00:49:23] Speaker C: Once this. I'm torn. I kind of like it that there's this thing happening that nobody can explain. And then maybe there are vampires, you know, maybe there are zombies and stuff like that. But then I go, no, no, logically, doesn't. Doesn't work. Because if that's the case, I should have wrote a novel about vampire badges, because those little are just riddled with tb. [00:49:50] Speaker B: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. Yes, please do. Look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:49:58] Speaker A: Anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:50:02] Speaker B: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal. Recently. Worst [00:50:05] Speaker D: comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you [00:50:07] Speaker B: for science. Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it. [00:50:14] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:50:17] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it. Welcome, everyone. Just wherever you are, wherever you're at, you'll know by now. Two moods. You'll just catch Joag. Whichever episode you listen to, you'll catch us in one of two moods, right? We've got two flavors. Either one week, we'll be fucking. You know, we're all just souls. Driving bodies made of stardust. Celestial material. The fucking iron in our blood, the carbon in our bones, born of supernovas. And our existence is a miracle. Catch the spark of life before it disappears again into the void. That's the one flavor that you'll get. And the other flavor is we are trapped, each of us, in a shroud of rot and disease. And short as life is, it isn't short enough. When will this end? Which flavor are you gonna get this week? I don't know. You'll find out when we do. But that's the fucking dice roll, isn't it? Welcome again to this week's Jack of All Graves, where we are delighted. Delighted and privileged. It's always fun when we invite a guest, isn't it, Corrigan? It's always nice when we have company. [00:51:34] Speaker A: It is? Yes, indeed. [00:51:36] Speaker B: Because if left unattended for too long, we turn our anger against one another. And this week, that cannot happen because we're delighted to have Craig Warwick with us. Craig, you are very, very, very welcome. [00:51:53] Speaker C: Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. I'm the filling in this Jack of all grave Sandwich. [00:52:01] Speaker B: International Cultural Exchange. Nice to have a Brett. Where. Where do you do we find you this evening? Craig, how far away are you and I? [00:52:11] Speaker C: West Yorkshire. So further north. [00:52:16] Speaker A: Yes. I thought that was the case, but I wasn't entirely sure. Delightful. This is a place that, like, I try to make Mark take me places when we're around. I sort of engineer ways to travel throughout the United Kingdom. And so I have been to a good portion of it at this point, but that is somewhere that I would really like to go because there's a lot of spookiness to West Yorkshire from what [00:52:44] Speaker C: I've got Whitby. [00:52:46] Speaker A: You've got Whitby, obviously, on the Dracula note, you know, you've got the goth festival that goes on there and whatnot. There's [00:52:56] Speaker C: a [00:52:57] Speaker A: lot of good stuff in that general vicinity that one day I will force Marco to make videos in [00:53:04] Speaker B: one day. I'm in Manchester this week with work, actually, so I'm a little bit closer to you this week. [00:53:10] Speaker A: Edging [00:53:10] Speaker C: up. Yeah, Yeah. I work in Manchester, so [00:53:15] Speaker A: I have been there. So look at that. [00:53:18] Speaker C: Now [00:53:18] Speaker A: we all have something in common. [00:53:21] Speaker C: I actually was born in. I was born in Manchester. [00:53:24] Speaker A: Oh, [00:53:25] Speaker C: I'm a monk. Yeah. [00:53:27] Speaker A: Oh, just like. Just like these guys. Take that. [00:53:31] Speaker C: I was trying to figure out who it was for so long. I couldn't tell who Mark looked like. I. I was like, who's. And I'm like, I can't see the rest of it. So. Thank God he does look. [00:53:49] Speaker A: Oh, no, come on. [00:53:51] Speaker B: He really does. He really does. Which would be a strange thing to wear on a T shirt. [00:53:55] Speaker A: It would. Yeah. We've established that's not the kind of thing that I wear on my clothes. [00:53:59] Speaker B: No. [00:53:59] Speaker C: Yeah. The Yorkshire Ripper. [00:54:01] Speaker A: But I will wear. Take that. I got this when I flew to England to see them in June, because [00:54:06] Speaker C: why [00:54:07] Speaker A: not perform here? Anyways, Craig, it is wonderful to have you. We have become acquainted through first the Blue sky, then of course, you know, using Instagram and things like that. Craig is an author of many. You're pretty prolific, actually. Is everything you write in the horror genre? [00:54:28] Speaker C: Mostly. [00:54:29] Speaker A: Mostly. [00:54:29] Speaker C: I would say that the early stuff wasn't. Okay. A bit. Bit more so seated in reality. Okay. Underbelly fiction and a bit of magical realism as well with the short stories. But, yeah, I've drifted into horror. As [00:54:46] Speaker A: gotten comfortable [00:54:46] Speaker C: there. Yeah. [00:54:48] Speaker A: Put your roots down. Yes. And at this point of your work? I have read the skin we feel [00:54:55] Speaker C: most comfortable. [00:54:55] Speaker A: Most comfortable in. And now your most recent. The instruction manual to being a vampire. Did I Get that right. [00:55:04] Speaker C: Yeah. What that says to me is, I've got to get shorter. [00:55:06] Speaker A: Your titles are. Maybe it also would help if I wrote things down. So, you know, maybe I need to work [00:55:15] Speaker C: on that. [00:55:16] Speaker A: Have some. Have some blame in this, but both books that I really enjoyed, one of which was, you know, the first of which was sort of an anthology sort of situation, and the latest. More just a straightforward vampire novel, which made me have a revelation because I really liked this book that I think I just don't like vampire movies. And I actually think I do like vampire books. [00:55:46] Speaker C: Yeah. Because you. You made reference to this on your stories recently on Instagram because you. You've read the Keith Rossen. [00:55:54] Speaker A: Yeah, Coffin Moon. I read that earlier this. [00:55:57] Speaker C: And you enjoyed that as well, didn't you? [00:55:59] Speaker A: I did, yeah. I really liked that one. And it was quite similar to one that I read last year. Oh, fudge. I keep forgetting what this one is called. But I had read another one that was like a kind of a similar premise, you know, of traveling with, like, a young vampire girl person who's not a vampire, traveling with a tween vampire or whatever. And I had enjoyed that one, too. And so after, like, reading these, you know, I read yours this weekend and was like, I think I might actually like vampire books. It's just something about vampire movies does not vibe with me. Although I will say part of it is I don't. I'm not a big fan of neck and wrist violence, which comes up a lot in vampire things. And I don't have, like, a mind's eye, so when I read it, I can't see it. And I think that also may be part. [00:56:49] Speaker B: That's it, isn't it? That the pen just dropped me there. You can handle vampires in print. [00:56:54] Speaker A: In print. [00:56:55] Speaker B: Because Aphantasia masks you. [00:56:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:59] Speaker B: From the aortic spray of it all. [00:57:02] Speaker A: Yes. Which is not to say that I'm not still grossed out. Your book, Craig, is very visceral, I would say, the descriptions of violence in this. I said to Mark, I was like, do you ever do the thing where, like, you're reading a really violent part of a book and you close your eyes sort of instinctively, but it's not your eyes, it's your brain, so you can't, like, you can't stop. Which Mark said, no, I can't relate to that. But, yeah, I did that several times in this where I kind of like, just shut my eyes on instinct and was like, that doesn't help. [00:57:37] Speaker C: It was. Was it the rolling pin [00:57:40] Speaker A: that Was. That was one of them. Yeah. There's. There's a few parts in this, and I don't want to give anything away, which is why we won't, like, dive like, super deep into things, but maybe, you know, talk about just generally what this book is about. Because I think once we sort of reached the end of this book, I had not seen where it was going, which, if you ask Marco, is. Normally I'm pretty good at spotting where something. [00:58:07] Speaker B: Yes. [00:58:08] Speaker A: Leading. And that was a really good, like, feeling of getting into being. Oh, oh, oh. Okay. The [00:58:16] Speaker B: number of times that we've sat down and. And put a movie on. Together on different sides of the planet. And, you know, we'll. We'll be shooting messages back and forth on signal and with it, by the end of the credits, you know. Okay, so I see. I see what's going [00:58:27] Speaker A: on. So [00:58:28] Speaker B: the fact that, you know, kept its surprises from you, Corrigan, is testament, I think, to. [00:58:36] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. [00:58:37] Speaker B: Crap. [00:58:39] Speaker C: Thank you. But [00:58:40] Speaker A: if you maybe want to, you know, what would you share with people about your book that wouldn't, you know, reveal too much about it? [00:58:48] Speaker C: Now, the weird thing is I kind of want to spoil it. The problem I have with it is because I've never had this conversation with anyone where I asked the question, do you think it's a vampire novel? Now, when you say that, and somebody who's not read the book, they'll go, wait a minute, it's got vampire. [00:59:11] Speaker A: It's in the [00:59:12] Speaker C: title tile. And, you know, you're talking about vampires today and all this kind of stuff. Surely it's a vampire novel. [00:59:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:59:19] Speaker C: And I kind of want to speak to other people and say, but is it [00:59:23] Speaker A: okay? See, I was avoiding getting, you know, into that because I didn't wanna [00:59:28] Speaker C: throw [00:59:29] Speaker A: that out there. But if that's what you. If you want to go there. [00:59:33] Speaker C: I kind of do because I'm not overly precious on it. And I. I know you that, you know, my publisher might be going, oh, don't. It'll affect sales. [00:59:45] Speaker A: Right, sure. [00:59:47] Speaker C: But for me, I think most writers are the same that you write the book and you spend however long writing it, you know, anything up to six months to whatever, or Salinger, 10 years, you do it. And then once it's done and you've gone through the edits and you've rewritten it and all this kind of stuff, you're kind of sick, sick of it. And you just. You [01:00:12] Speaker A: just. Right. [01:00:13] Speaker C: You want it out in the world and you move on. It's a bit like being in A sort of loveless marriage for a while, you know, at the end, you know, like, it's not working. You know, it's me, it's not you. You go away. I'm gonna get somebody else now. Right. You know, and this is all new and exciting and everything'. So once it's gone, I'm kind of done with it. And then it becomes the reader's book and [01:00:37] Speaker A: then [01:00:37] Speaker C: they own it. And it's for them then to make up the story afterwards and them to look into any sort of multi layer, you know, metaphor or whatever it is that you want to look into it. I think at that point it's no longer the architects. [01:00:58] Speaker A: Sure. [01:00:58] Speaker C: It's no longer their thing. You know, so if we look at, you know, just. You have to keep me on track because I just veer off. [01:01:05] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:01:07] Speaker B: please. [01:01:08] Speaker C: If we look at horror in general and you, you know, Jaws, I'll. I'll use this example because I know it's, you know, it's [01:01:18] Speaker A: a thing I'm [01:01:18] Speaker C: into. [01:01:19] Speaker A: Yep. [01:01:19] Speaker C: Yeah. So you can look at Jaws in two different ways or many other ways, but two, the two distinct ways of looking at Jaws is that it's shark movie, period, done. And if you ask Spielberg, that's what he'll say. He'll tell you that it's just a shark movie. It's about a shark that terrorizes a little island, and that's what it's about. Then you can also look at it a different way and say, actually maybe it's about recession. [01:01:48] Speaker A: Right. [01:01:48] Speaker C: Because as soon as the shark comes in, it affects business. Hence why the mayor's all over it and he doesn't want, you know, the, the beaches to shut down because it's going to affect business. [01:02:00] Speaker A: Right. [01:02:00] Speaker C: So you can see that the shark represents recession. Now, whether Benchley had that in his head when he wrote it. But I think that's something that happens after the book has been written. [01:02:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:14] Speaker C: And people then start to look at it differently. And we look at the thing and we look at, you know, John Carpenter's a thing, and it's just about an alien coming down and, you know, affecting all these different people through their blood. You could also look at it based on the fact that the timeline was about 1982, that it could be a sort of metaphor for or a social commentary on aids. Because we were paranoid. We didn't know who had it. And the only way to test it was through blood. [01:02:46] Speaker A: Right. [01:02:47] Speaker C: And all these things happen, I think, after. So they become something else. So when I wrote the book. I wrote it as one thing, and then I wanted to hand it over to the, you know, whoever wants to read it and allow them to have it and create something else out of it. So I'm always interested. And this is the quote. This is why I'm asking the question, what was it a vampire book? Because. [01:03:12] Speaker A: Right. [01:03:12] Speaker C: To you, it might be, but then you might interpret it as something completely different. [01:03:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That is really interesting because this is, you know, as I read things, I tend to kind of try to, like, pull those, like, threads out of it. Right. Like, what does this mean? What do. What is. Is this a metaphor for something? Is it, you know, is it just a book about a vampire? Things like that, you know, which is questionable, obviously, as it kind of goes along. And I think it's really interesting that this perspective of, like, you know, I wrote it for one thing, but now it's yours and maybe we'll talk more about that. But I am curious, like, as such, obviously there are writers who very clearly write the message in. Right. You know exactly what this is a metaphor for. You know, exactly what contemporary issues this is dealing with, things like that. While you're kind of giving this to your reader to work with and to put their own sort of interpretations on, is there something in this book particularly, or maybe in general in your works that you are trying to get across that you're like, if there's one thing you take from this, this is a thing I want you to take, or. [01:04:31] Speaker C: Yes. Okay, what? And it's nothing to do with vampires. [01:04:35] Speaker A: Sure. [01:04:37] Speaker C: My. My main. That will. The spur that kind of pushed me forward in this was trying to slightly change the landscape of horror when it came to female led, [01:04:57] Speaker A: you [01:04:57] Speaker C: know, characters. So I'm kind. I'm at the point now where I'm having watched a lot of horror and studied horror, and I'm kind of tired of having to dehuman, dehumanize, abuse, rape, be whatever, women. For them to rise up against their aggressor, the perpetrator, assailant, whatever you want to, and then become the final girl. [01:05:29] Speaker A: Right. [01:05:30] Speaker C: I'm sick of that trope. [01:05:32] Speaker A: Yes. And you do. It comes up explicitly from your character in this about, like, not wanting to be the final girl because there shouldn't be just one. Or something along those lines in the book. Yeah, [01:05:43] Speaker C: yeah. Or the final boy, whatever. Yeah. You know, it's not gender specific, really, but so I'm kind of. I was, like, so annoyed with it. And don't get me wrong, in the past There have been strong female led characters that are not victims per se. You know, Ripley being the big one, I would say even Sarah from Day of the Dead. [01:06:06] Speaker A: Sure. [01:06:07] Speaker C: She was a strong character, you know, throughout that. And she, you know, she stood toe to toe with the army, you know, and she wasn't abused. Yes, she got verbally abused, but she held her own. [01:06:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:19] Speaker C: So you can do it. [01:06:20] Speaker A: You [01:06:21] Speaker C: can do it. So when I see the. I can't watch I spit on your grave or whatever it is. I can't watch things like. [01:06:29] Speaker A: I don't do that. Yeah. [01:06:31] Speaker C: Because it's just too harrowing [01:06:32] Speaker A: to [01:06:33] Speaker C: see what [01:06:33] Speaker B: go through [01:06:34] Speaker C: that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So at the time, I was thinking, okay, and then my wife came to me and said that I don't understand, really. I've just been to a seminar where the. Teaching us to protect ourselves, you know, if we're going to the car at night and it's, you know, it's dark or whatever, and we're on our own, these are some of the things that we should do. And she gave me a shopping list of things that, you know, you should [01:07:03] Speaker A: apply [01:07:04] Speaker C: into your journey to get [01:07:05] Speaker A: your car [01:07:06] Speaker C: in the dark. And I'm like, okay, that's. Yeah, I understand it. She said, I don't understand why they're teaching us that. Why they're not teaching boys to be more respectful of women. And. And it's like, yes, I. I get it, you know, and it should be that way. So what. What can we do to change that? And there's not much I can do other than raise my boy in a way which he respects women. [01:07:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:36] Speaker C: And I don't want to tell my daughter I've got a boy and a girl, but I don't want to tell my daughter that. Hey, keep. You. Keep your keys handy and stick in between you. [01:07:44] Speaker A: Key between the knuckles. Yeah, [01:07:46] Speaker C: yeah, No, I don't want to do that. But I want to tell you, Charlie, to make sure that if you see a woman, you know, that you, you, you. You know, you. You just help if you can, or you just stay back, you know, just don't intimidate, don't make him feel uncomfortable, all those kind of things. And hopefully he goes on and then we can change it slightly. So whilst all this is happening, my wife brings this to me. Then we've got the Epstein going on and Trump going [01:08:10] Speaker B: on, [01:08:10] Speaker C: and I'm like, oh, man, these. And the Tate brothers. [01:08:14] Speaker A: Yep. [01:08:15] Speaker C: All these people were in the media at the time. Still are. And I just wanted to really burn them down in some way. [01:08:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:08:27] Speaker C: So I'm going, right. I want to change the landscape of horror a little bit. So I want a Ripley or a Sarah, and I also want to see these get. You know, get something at the end of it. [01:08:45] Speaker A: Right. [01:08:45] Speaker C: So that's what I did. So my message was that going back to [01:08:50] Speaker A: the [01:08:50] Speaker C: original question, that was what I was pushing for. [01:08:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:08:55] Speaker C: That I wrapped it in the vampire world mattered not really. [01:09:00] Speaker A: Right. [01:09:00] Speaker C: It was. But I did it that way. And partly it was also. And I don't know if this applies to you, Mark, as. As a. As a man, boy, whatever. You're kind of always searching for that second father. You might find it in your friend, your best friend. So we take Stand by Me. Gordy sees it in Chris, you know, or, you know, you might see in your own uncle, that you take little bits. You'll have your own father, your biological father, good or bad, but you take little bits from different people because you want to be guided by it. You want to be, you know, told how to get through life. So you kind of, you know, gravitate to certain people to get that information that you need to help you through life. So again, I wanted to address those things, which is why I created Herwig Roth, which is the vampire in the movie. So those are the two main things that I wanted to explore. Really. [01:09:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:10:01] Speaker C: So it's interesting. Like I say, you know, what is the book? You know, what is it to different people? It's, you know, oh, it's a vampire novel. You know, it's very gory and it's blah, blah, blah. It's like. Yeah, and I was entertained and it was funny. And there's loads of movie references in there. [01:10:15] Speaker A: Right. [01:10:15] Speaker C: She's an interesting character and all this. Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, it is. And it is your book, you know, if you like it for that reason. [01:10:21] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:10:22] Speaker C: you know, that's. That's great. You know, I've done something, at least [01:10:26] Speaker B: something that Corey and I have bemoaned often over the years is. It seemed that we got to a point a few years back where every horror movie we watched was, you know, the monster was issues. The monster was generational trauma, or the monster was, you know, the patriarchy or the mon. You know, these had set out. These had draped themselves in the trappings of. Of horror, but they. They weren't horror movies at all. They were just issues movies, message movies. And it. It appears to me, or. And do stop me if you disagree, Corey, that if. If you're gonna make. If you're Gonna put a message in the work. Make the work able to stand alone from the message first as a fucking foundation. If it's gonna deliver that message. If you. You're gonna have that moment of revelation where you realize, wait a minute. I relate. I get this. I've got kids. I've got. I'm a parent. I see these wrongs all around me. Hide it well in the. Make the work stand in and of itself to deliver that message, because otherwise you may as well just film, you know, a psa. Otherwise you may as well just write an essay, you know, [01:11:49] Speaker A: Right? [01:11:50] Speaker B: The work has to deliver that message in and of itself. The work has to properly deliver that message almost without realizing that it's in there until it fucking gets you maybe from the flanks, you know. Such a great reference point. Day of the Dead Sarah does not get anything like the credit that that character deserves. Like. Like you. Beautifully said, right up there with the Ripleys and the Sarah Connors as being just. I cannot think of another woman who faces down the undead, the military, the collapse of all of the structures, the odds, the maths, the gore. She fucking absolutely faces it all down and isn't a victim in any of it. You know, what a great cultural reference point there. Not one that we hear enough of. [01:12:45] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's, you know, all of that, really. These were things that I was thinking about in. In reading this, which, you know, to Marco's point, I think it is important that the story has to kind of stand on its own. Right. It's like, you know, that is. That's the big frustration. It's not something having a message, but that if you were to remove it, you wouldn't still have a story that was enjoyable to read. And I think this, you know, your book works on that level of just story to read, but also. But I kept thinking a lot about this. This main character in this. This girl who kind of just, like, she struggles with people, you know, and. And being like, excluded and not kind of being on the level with. With other people and, you know, finding this figure who she really latches onto and who latches onto her kind of mutually as, like, lonely, as, like, having this inability to connect and that being sort of, you know, what. Why is she fucking hanging out with this old weirdo who drains blood from people? Like, because she's not in the group chat at work, you know, this is. That's what happens, you know, and. And fighting and going through this. And I kept thinking, like, you know, like, why is it so hard for her. And thinking through this, I think, helped me to connect really, with this character. Constantly just being like, man, why don't people. Why don't people get her? Like, and sometimes she does kind of suck, but, like, other times you're just like, yeah, she's just, you know, in her own. In her own world and moving through this as, like, thus. Then a character who isn't, you know, isn't traumatized, per se, like, you get with so many, you know, quote, unquote, final girls that she manages to kind of move through this world in a way that doesn't feel like, yes, some atrocity had to happen in order to, you know, make her work as a character. And then, like you said, to have, like, this comeuppance for the worst people that we are dealing with in our world is very cathartic, which [01:14:54] Speaker B: has to be activated somehow. [01:14:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Has to be activated in a sense. Like, all of these things that you've kind of brought up are things that I was thinking about as I was reading this. This book, you know, all these different sort of elements of it. [01:15:09] Speaker C: Yeah. And I mean, she. She. She has her own issues. [01:15:13] Speaker A: Yeah. There's [01:15:14] Speaker C: no denying that being, you know, she's. Where we start from is a point of her mourning the loss of a family. [01:15:22] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [01:15:23] Speaker C: And attending the Good Grief [01:15:26] Speaker A: support [01:15:26] Speaker C: group. [01:15:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Good Lord, I hated those people. [01:15:31] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So. And. And she's struggling with hypochondria. You know, she's. She's overthinking, [01:15:42] Speaker A: which this is like. I. Sorry, I. Just to, like, not to interrupt, but this is a thing that I'm so interested by as a person who, like, you know, my dad died sort of traumatically that there was so much that I like, really recognized in her dealing with this. And I'm always curious, like, is this a thing? Like, are you a dead dad's club person? Like, this happened in your family. You just really managed to relate to this on this level? [01:16:06] Speaker C: No, my father's passed away. Yeah. So I am in the club. [01:16:10] Speaker A: In the club. Yes. [01:16:11] Speaker C: I didn't even know if this was a club. I didn't. [01:16:13] Speaker A: I [01:16:13] Speaker C: think at the end of [01:16:13] Speaker A: it. Welcome. Yeah, sorry. I'll add you to the group chat after this. [01:16:17] Speaker C: Yeah. If you could. Yeah. [01:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:16:19] Speaker C: But I also suffered with hypochondria for many years. [01:16:23] Speaker A: Okay. [01:16:23] Speaker C: And [01:16:24] Speaker B: I see. [01:16:25] Speaker C: I had. This is pre Internet. There was. I. I found in some. We have something called the Works. It was like a kind of similar place. It was a shop where they just had books and there was A. I think it was called Conditions and Symptoms Book. And essentially it was this tone, kind of heavy, gangly [01:16:46] Speaker B: thing you'd find in the works. [01:16:47] Speaker C: Yes. And I didn't think anything of it, and I put it in the bathroom. So obviously, when you sat there for a few minutes, you start to just flip through the pages. And the way it worked was it would say, have you got a cough? We'll go back to. [01:17:01] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [01:17:02] Speaker C: And you go, yes. And it go. Turn to page. Whatever. [01:17:05] Speaker A: It's like a. Choose your own adventure. [01:17:07] Speaker B: Choose your own [01:17:09] Speaker C: death. [01:17:10] Speaker A: No one needs that. [01:17:11] Speaker C: No. And everything led to cancer. [01:17:14] Speaker A: Of course. Yeah. Flip enough pages. [01:17:17] Speaker C: Yeah. You've got, you know, a rash. Yes, it's the rash. This. Is it that color? Yes. You've got cancer. Right. Okay. So for many years, I was just sat on the toilet just thinking, I've got cancer. So I was booking appointments at the doctors on a weekly basis, [01:17:36] Speaker A: and [01:17:36] Speaker C: I would go in with. Just strange. I. Because I remember. And I think this is in the book. I went in and my. My. My doctor was so patient with me. He clearly knew there was a problem, but he just, you know, indulged me. So I'd sit there and I'd say, you know, look at my arms, Doc. And he goes, yeah. He said, look how veiny they are. [01:18:03] Speaker A: And [01:18:03] Speaker C: you go, okay. I said, [01:18:05] Speaker B: wow, [01:18:06] Speaker C: veiny arms. Isn't that, like, poor circulation? Have I got a heart problem? [01:18:11] Speaker A: Right. [01:18:12] Speaker C: And without. Just like, you know, he didn't snigger or anything. He just went, no, Mr. Wall, you've just got veiny arms. [01:18:18] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. [01:18:20] Speaker C: And that was it. And then it was almost like you've gone to confession [01:18:24] Speaker A: and [01:18:25] Speaker C: you've been given a reprieve. And I. This huge weight came off me, and I felt like I was reborn, like. And it was almost cathartic to live through. So you go, oh. And then you get that rush and everything's great and the sky is a lot brighter, you know, and you can hear the bird song again. And you're walking around, and then the next day you wake up and you feel a lump, and it's like, oh, my [01:18:50] Speaker A: God, [01:18:50] Speaker C: I've got a lump. And I'm like, we've got to go to A E. I mean, why are we going? Yeah, because I've got a lump, and it's in my groin area, and that's where the lymph nodes are, and it's bound to be non Hodgkin's disease, [01:19:05] Speaker A: Right? Yep. [01:19:06] Speaker C: So we're in A E, Four hours. Because I Can't wait a week for the doctor's appointment. I get pulled into a cubicle, doctor comes in, they press the lump, I fart. And it was just trap wind. [01:19:21] Speaker A: That's a thing. [01:19:22] Speaker C: That was a thing. [01:19:25] Speaker A: The human body is a marvel. [01:19:28] Speaker C: They went, yeah, that was just trapped. And I thought, I'm really sorry. But then everything's brilliant again. Right. Start the [01:19:35] Speaker A: cycle over [01:19:36] Speaker C: the sun. Yeah. And, you know, so I just fell into that pattern. [01:19:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:42] Speaker C: For many, many years. [01:19:44] Speaker A: Right. [01:19:44] Speaker B: What moved you out of that? What moved you out of that phase? Presuming that. That you. You have moved out of that phase. What. Was there anything you can think of that kind of pushed you forward, pushed you out of it? Because that's a hell of a cycle. [01:19:56] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:19:57] Speaker C: it is. And getting rid of the book was the first step. [01:20:01] Speaker A: Sure. Right, yeah. Not constantly reading about how you're dying. [01:20:05] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think the point. I almost had a scare. [01:20:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:16] Speaker C: Was the catalyst behind changing it. So I found a lump in my neck and I went to the doctors and I assumed they just press it and say, it's right, it's far. Again, I'll burn. [01:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah, [01:20:29] Speaker A: no problem. [01:20:32] Speaker C: So I. I was expecting that. And they said, no, have you. And again, non Hodgkinson's came up. And I went, yes, I know about that. We're going to send you for a chest scan to make sure that, you know, nothing's spread to your lungs. And I was waiting. It was just over the period of Christmas, and I had to wait all Christmas before getting the results back. And once they came back and they said, no, it's fine, it's. It'll probably just your lymph node that's flared up, it's viral, it'll go down. I then realized that I'm worrying too much, and worry is a huge stress on the body [01:21:08] Speaker A: and [01:21:08] Speaker C: you need to step back. You need to step back. And this was probably tying in with me becoming a father and realizing that I have to be here. [01:21:17] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:21:18] Speaker C: I. I know. And I. I can't live in this perpetual motion of self diagnosis and catastrophizing and thinking I'm gonna die, and I just had to step out of it. And I'm still a little bit paranoid. I still think about things a little bit too much, but not on the scale of what I did back then. [01:21:36] Speaker B: So would it be a stretch then for me to. To position that it's perhaps that element of your life lingering, which has shown up in the kind of medicalization of vampirism in the Book, perhaps. [01:21:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, because I, you know, I. Again, a point I brought up before, I'm very logical. So when I decided that I was going to write about a vampire, I know you've, you've read a few vampire books. It's okay to speak. Call you Corey. Is that okay? [01:22:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yep. [01:22:10] Speaker C: Okay, Wonderful. Corey [01:22:12] Speaker A: Corrigan. Whatever. Whatever comes out. [01:22:14] Speaker C: Okay. But if you've watched a lot of movies, the, the very similar, they, they stick to the blueprint, and the blueprint is they are the walking dead. They have fangs, they can't go at night, garlic crosses. [01:22:32] Speaker A: Right. [01:22:32] Speaker C: That kind of thing. And I went, I want to get rid of that. So what? Why would a person want blood? Why would they need blood? [01:22:43] Speaker A: Right. [01:22:44] Speaker C: And so then this medical part, like Mark says, starts to tick around in my head. Okay, what conditions, diseases require blood. [01:22:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:53] Speaker C: And then thalassemia came into the mix. I'm thinking, okay, thalassemia, that's, you know, where the. I think it's. The blood doesn't produce enough iron, so you've overgoat regular transfusions. What if you wrap that up? What if you took that to the next level where. Whereby a person needs weekly transfusions instead of monthly transfusions. And what if the NHS hasn't given them those transfusions? So I'll have to go out and. Yeah, and find the blood themselves. That's interesting because that's real then. Right, [01:23:25] Speaker B: so did you go through any kind of process of assembling the law and thinking through each kind of bit? Well, I can sort of explain that. And if I can't, it's gone. [01:23:37] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. [01:23:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:23:39] Speaker B: Fascinating. [01:23:40] Speaker C: I just threw most of them out the window. [01:23:43] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. So it's like some sort of ground almost [01:23:47] Speaker B: made the cut. Because if I were to stretch. All right, let's. Let's take garlic. What has it got? It's got. Is it allium? Is that the chemical in it? Is there some kind of deficiency like they say? I mean, I don't know how much science is in it, but pregnancy cravings, it's [01:24:05] Speaker A: iron. And the body [01:24:07] Speaker B: kind of trying to account for. For bits that the fetus might be leeching from it. So maybe is. Is garlic a kind of a subconscious manifestation of a deficiency in blood? But [01:24:20] Speaker C: they don't like garlic. [01:24:22] Speaker B: That's a great. [01:24:23] Speaker A: Yeah, right. It's the other way around. Yeah. [01:24:25] Speaker C: So. So what is it that's in garlic that they don't want? That's the thing that you'd ask the question. [01:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:24:32] Speaker C: So why is it that they can't go out during the day. [01:24:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:36] Speaker C: You know, so is it uv? And it's usually. [01:24:38] Speaker A: Right. [01:24:38] Speaker C: Something to do with uv. But why. And what. What condition would cause a person to have that? That's when you start to look at it more logical. [01:24:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:47] Speaker A: Right. [01:24:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I love it. [01:24:48] Speaker C: And. And how can you slow down the aging process? We can't, really. [01:24:52] Speaker A: Right. [01:24:53] Speaker C: So they just naturally age. [01:24:55] Speaker A: If [01:24:56] Speaker C: you go to. If you look at hunger. The hunger, I should say with David Bowie, they're very much like that. They can go out during the day, you know, and they. You know, they. They're kind of normal people, but they just feed on. [01:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:10] Speaker C: And I'm more interested in that than I am. I don't know. Like Lost Boys, [01:25:16] Speaker A: right? Yeah. [01:25:18] Speaker C: You know, I love Lost Boys. Don't get me wrong. You know, I do think, you know, it's always, like, a favorite to watch. But they're not my vampires. They're not the vampires I want to write. [01:25:28] Speaker B: Fantasy, kind of angle. [01:25:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:30] Speaker C: Mythical. Yeah. [01:25:31] Speaker B: Are they. Let me ask, are there any other. Either in print or on screen, are there any other movies that you think have come close to getting it in that. That believable realm? [01:25:46] Speaker C: I definitely, yeah. The Hunger Trouble Every Day was another one. [01:25:55] Speaker B: Great [01:25:55] Speaker C: movie. Yeah. That was kind of seated in reality. Yes. Martin. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Martin addiction. The evil pharrell one. There's a. There's a Chilean one called El Conde that's. Is [01:26:22] Speaker A: that the one with. [01:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:23] Speaker A: The dictator. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. [01:26:27] Speaker C: There's a wonderful scene, and I always go to this. If you've never seen the film, just search it up on YouTube. But there's a wonderful scene where the. The female learns to fly. [01:26:38] Speaker B: And [01:26:38] Speaker C: I know that we're suspending disbelief, but it's just. It's poetic the way it's filmed and the way she. She stumbles through the air and then finally sort of finds her wings. A little bit I'm trying to think is, have you seen humanist vampires seeking consented. Consenting suicidal person? [01:26:57] Speaker A: You have? [01:26:58] Speaker B: Certainly have. Yes. Yes. [01:27:00] Speaker C: And you. You call me for long titles. [01:27:04] Speaker A: Well, yeah, exactly. I'm impressed. You managed. Well. You have notes. See, there you go. I [01:27:09] Speaker C: do, because I had to write that down just in case. So that's kind of. Again, I think it. I. I think there is a lot of lore around that, but I kind of like it because it steps slightly outside the norm. And a Girl Walks Home Alone at Night was another one. Because, again, she's not a victim. [01:27:28] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [01:27:30] Speaker C: You [01:27:30] Speaker B: know, she's more a piece of [01:27:31] Speaker C: work. Yeah. A predator more than anything. So there are ones that come close, but probably. And I'm not, you know, patting myself on the back here. Not as sort of realistic as maybe. Maybe the one I've written. [01:27:43] Speaker A: Right. [01:27:44] Speaker C: I've kind of stripped it right down. [01:27:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I think that does make it really interesting, you know, because. And maybe that's part of why I enjoy it is just kind of not having the, like, basic set of rules and it being some. Some sort of grounding, you know, where I. I kind of go back and forth between either wanting something to. Either, like, you need to explain this or don't explain anything to me, you know, because if you try, I'm going to be poking holes in it the entire time. You know, it's kind of the two ends of the spectrum. And so giving, like, just enough, I think is always, like, a delicate art with these things. And I think I do kind of appreciate that. Yeah. As you kind of go through this, there's, like, this, like, medical kind of reasoning and like, the development of kind of, like the iffiness of the story, too, that you're getting from this vampire, that you're never entirely sure whether he's telling the truth about his situation or not. Kind of. [01:28:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:28:41] Speaker A: Makes it so that then you're also not, like, sitting here like, well, that doesn't make sense. Like, I don't know. He could be making it up. I've never heard of thalassemia or whatever it's called. It's. It's. Who knows if that's what this does or if he's just, like, bullshitting stuff so that, you know, this character will go along with him. And thus, you know, you can kind of lean into what's going on in the story being, like, it's a little grounded, but also, it doesn't matter if it's not. [01:29:06] Speaker C: Yeah. Medically accurate. Yeah. You have to suspend disbelief completely. Right. When I watch a Romero movie, I know the dead rise up because, you know, we look at rigor, you know, and all the things that happens to a body, how the. Can something come out? [01:29:20] Speaker A: Simply not gonna [01:29:21] Speaker C: work. No. So I suspend disbelief, and I go, no, I just want to watch shuffle shuffling zombies. It's brilliant. [01:29:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:29:28] Speaker C: Or you start. If you do start to add, like, you say there's a fine line. You start to add the medical stuff in there. There. The. What Chuck Pollinic used to call the head and the heart. So you can convince a reader to take your hand and walk with you through the novel. If you get Them emotionally, which is the heart or the head, which is the mechanics. So you do a lot of kind of research, and if you can blend the two, then you've kind of got them. [01:29:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So [01:29:54] Speaker C: if you do put a lot of mechanics in there, they have to be believable. They have to be well researched. [01:30:00] Speaker B: Sure. [01:30:00] Speaker C: Because if somebody starts to question them, then you can fall back and say, actually, no, that is a condition. [01:30:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:30:05] Speaker C: And there is an element of, you know, you know, suspending of disbelief. Because at the end of the day, we're talking about vampires. [01:30:11] Speaker A: Right. [01:30:13] Speaker C: But the. The other thing is, it's the you. You hit on it just a minute ago is what is truth? And that's the big question you end up with or certainly asking at the end of the novel. [01:30:27] Speaker A: Right. [01:30:28] Speaker C: If you reflect back to the first page, what is truth throughout that novel? [01:30:34] Speaker A: Right. [01:30:35] Speaker C: And you can reread it completely differently once you know the ending [01:30:40] Speaker A: and [01:30:40] Speaker C: you go, okay. And I. I can see now that this potentially is even more real than I thought it was. [01:30:49] Speaker A: Interesting. [01:30:51] Speaker C: Because [01:30:52] Speaker A: I may have to try, you know. Yeah. Don't give anything away. Listen, [01:30:56] Speaker C: I know. Just [01:30:57] Speaker A: don't want you to say too much because it is. [01:30:59] Speaker C: It's [01:30:59] Speaker A: so worth reading. I really think it's worth reading. And Marco has some things he'd like to talk with you about. But first, the one thing that, like, I think just is interesting in you sharing this bit about your own experiences with hypochondria and things like that, a thing I'm always curious about and why I ask about the Dead Dads Club and things like that. That is, you know, how much you put of yourself into this. And in fact, when I was reading this, too, I thought, because I know you are married, I was like, how much, you know, is his wife's experiences in this? And you kind of spoke to that with the, you know, the training on, you know, how to avoid being victimized as opposed to how to avoid victimizing other people. And, you know, this character in this is young. She's, you know, like. Like 22 or something like that in this book, but has kind of older tastes and things like that. So I assume there has to be sort of a decision you make between, like, do I kind of like Chuck Wendig this? Right. And, like, talk like a, you know, a kid who's on tick tock, or do I reflect more of, like, what I know of things? So I guess overall, I'm kind of thinking, like, how much of yourself do you determine. Determine to put into something and how do you decide. Decide how to not like Mary sue, your. Your work. You know, it's not a full self insert, but where that reflects more of like, it makes the book feel more real. You know what I mean? [01:32:24] Speaker C: Yeah. This. I think there's a quote from Scott Fitzgerald that says you kind of mini versions of yourself with it. It's like the. The Russian nesting dolls. You know, the overall story is the big one. And then within that there's smaller versions of yourself inside. [01:32:40] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. [01:32:40] Speaker C: And there is a lot of me in it. There's certainly the. The movie lover part of it is in there. There's a part of my daughter in there because she suffers with emetophobia, which is an aversion to being sick, you know, vomit, which is a terrible disorder because it causes panic attacks and stuff like that. So a lot of what she was going through kind of fell into it. A lot of what my wife was telling me was coming into it. So. And then what you do is you. You try. Because the best thing is, why should I write from the perspective of an Inuit when I've never met one or, you know, world? [01:33:22] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:33:23] Speaker C: you have to kind of do it from a point of authority. And the best thing to do is the inner dialogue that we all share is completely different sometimes to the outer dialogue that we share. So what we say in our head rarely makes it out because of social etiquette and various things. And we don't want to offend people. The writers are. The writer is allowed to do that. It's a bit like the ventriloquist. The ventriloquist and the dummy. So the dummy will say everything that the person controlling it wants to say about anybody. [01:34:04] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, they will. [01:34:06] Speaker C: Yeah. And the thing is, we don't blame the ventriloquist because we think it's coming from the dummy. [01:34:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:12] Speaker C: It's a strange phenomena that happens. A dummy will take the piss out of somebody and they will take offense to the dummy, not the ventriloquist. [01:34:20] Speaker A: Right. [01:34:21] Speaker C: Kind of what you do as an author is that you write all the things that you're thinking, but you can't say, but your characters get blamed for it. [01:34:29] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. [01:34:31] Speaker C: So a lot of what I wrote was a lot of my inner dialogue and the fears I have for my kids and the. The world, politics currently, and just this. Just this feeling that we need to change that, you know, men need to change, you know, and they're the things that kind of bled into it. So there is a lot of me and it. Yeah, [01:34:54] Speaker A: yeah. I think that comes through. You know, one of the things that I really thought about in this is that it feels, again, kind of grounded in like a human truth, you know, in things that genuinely feel, you know, whether or not any like, you know, it's like a 21 year old that I know may not necessarily say exactly these things, but that they would be thinking it doesn't seem crazy to me, you know, and it feels very much truthful to what it is like to move about this, this. This world as a young person and a young woman and that I think to your sort of ventriloquist point here, that one of the thoughts that I had in reading this was just that, you know, you managed to kind of thread that needle of where there's things in this that are like, offensive or edgy or things like that. That in the hands, I think, of a man writing a decade ago or. I mean, there's probably a lot of men who are. Who, I don't know, I don't read a lot of men now, but like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, you know, reading books that were by men would kind of. You would read misogyny in it. You know, in the edginess of this, where this. You can very much feel the feminist thread coming through here, that as any time that there is something that, you know, maybe pushes the line a little bit, that there's still this, this very real feminist underpinning to this book that I think I really appreciated as I read it. And obviously it comes through even more once you get to the end of it. But I think it's one of the, like, real strengths of this. No, [01:36:33] Speaker C: that, that's. That if, if I take anything away, that is the kind of compliment or viewpoint that I was searching for. And that's what means the most to me because it's hard as a white CIS male to write from the perspective of a young female. [01:36:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:36:54] Speaker C: And you don't want to it up. [01:36:56] Speaker A: Right? [01:36:57] Speaker C: Don't want to it up. Because what is the point, [01:36:59] Speaker A: you [01:37:00] Speaker C: know, and yes, the vernacular might not be true to, you know, there's not, you know, the way this. But I can mimic or, you know, to a point what my daughter Sundays. She's like 18 nearly. But, you know, it's the. It's the feelings, the worries. Exactly. [01:37:20] Speaker A: That's so much more important than, you know, the specifics of the slang or the references or things like that. I mean, listen, you're not writing like a Stephen King child here where you're like, that's a 70 year old man, you know, but [01:37:36] Speaker B: that it [01:37:37] Speaker A: has to sound like a kid. [01:37:38] Speaker B: I, I won't name the book, but very recently I've read a novel where it's a fella of our age, Craig, writing a teenage girl. And it's, it's. Christ, it's horrific. You know, just every other word is. I Instagrammed my Snapchat. You know what I mean? My playlists, YouTube playlist, Spotify, oh me. It. It's. It's a pastiche almost. And it's horrific. I think the fact that you've even voiced that, that, that kind of self aware concern about not wanting to get it wrong. [01:38:21] Speaker A: Right. [01:38:21] Speaker B: Is probably testament to the mindset that you're approaching it in. You know, I'd love to know why the vampire angle was the kind of framing device that you went with as opposed to werewolf, zombie. What was it about? Vampirism. That was the one to tell the tale. [01:38:45] Speaker C: I've said this on previous interviews, but it came from the title really because I had the instruction manual to being something. Didn't know what it was. I started with the title before the story. And I ran through a few things. Instruction manual spinners on zombie. Instruction manual to be in a werewolf. The instruction man used to be in a serial killer, you know. And I'm starting going through them and I'm like, oh. And I came up with a story for that and. But he didn't have the legs. That's the thing. I started to play it out and I'm going, yeah, but it kind of falls flat there. And I've written in short form werewolves, zombies, aliens, you know, things like that in short form. I've never written a vampire story, so I thought the instruction manual to be in a vampire. Okay, that's got something. And then you build on that. Then you start asking questions. What does that mean? Now I'm a 70s 80s child and I grew up around Hammerhouse. [01:39:48] Speaker A: Yes. [01:39:49] Speaker C: And Christopher Lee, you know, was like the OG Dracula for me. And I remember around about the age of six or seven. I have to be careful about saying that because I expect some kids just. [01:40:03] Speaker B: I was made by hands. [01:40:06] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:40:07] Speaker C: I know. [01:40:08] Speaker A: So you can tell I don't have kids because I. It does not occur to me every time I'm surprised when someone starts doing the thing. [01:40:15] Speaker C: Yeah. I almost did it. So I remember that I was like, there was two. There was two. Two people I. I really wanted to be. And that was Superman or Dracula. Okay. Both wore [01:40:31] Speaker A: the Two [01:40:31] Speaker C: wore capes. Yeah. Both had uniforms. Both had special powers. [01:40:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:40:37] Speaker C: And I instantly went with Dracula to begin with. So I got my mom and dad to buy me a cape and my mom to get me to eat plum tomatoes out of a can. Told me that they were babies. Hearts and. [01:40:52] Speaker B: Nice. Nice man. Very nice. [01:40:54] Speaker C: You know, it's [01:40:54] Speaker A: a very Christmas story. Show me how the piggies eat. [01:40:59] Speaker C: So I would wolf that down. Like. [01:41:01] Speaker A: That is so funny. [01:41:03] Speaker C: Now the other thing that fell out of it was my nan. Nana. That. That's what you. I assume that's a term we all kind of. [01:41:12] Speaker B: Yeah, [01:41:13] Speaker A: I. I've been on this podcast with a British man long enough to know the terms. [01:41:17] Speaker C: Okay, good. So my nana, she was Catholic, I'm church of England, so I used to go to her house and there'd be Jesus effigies everywhere and crosses and various things. And she even had like a little sort of basin of holy water which you could [01:41:34] Speaker B: dab [01:41:35] Speaker C: your fingers in. So I go there and I say to my nan, I need a cross, a crucifix. [01:41:43] Speaker A: Oh, dear. [01:41:44] Speaker B: Wow. [01:41:45] Speaker C: And she goes, she. She doesn't. Doesn't miss a beat. She just hands it over because she thinks I'm converting. [01:41:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So great. Finally, [01:41:53] Speaker B: can I hear a bit more about the basin? Is. Was it like a bowl or. [01:41:58] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Okay, rewind. It was on the wall and it was very small. It was like a little bird dish. Imagine like a. A bird dish for like, I don't know, [01:42:11] Speaker A: like a hummingbird, A little baby bird. [01:42:13] Speaker C: Yeah, like [01:42:14] Speaker B: a ramekin. Yeah, [01:42:15] Speaker C: yeah. Sylvania family type bird dish that size. And it was on the wall and it was always filled. I don't know where she got it from, this water. I [01:42:26] Speaker A: guess you just like take any water to the church and have the church bless it. Right. [01:42:31] Speaker C: One assumes. But I don't know where the tub was with it. [01:42:34] Speaker A: Oh. [01:42:35] Speaker B: Because [01:42:35] Speaker C: you're not going to take the same amount. Like a little thimble. [01:42:38] Speaker A: Right. [01:42:38] Speaker B: That's a great point. [01:42:39] Speaker A: So somewhere she had like a pre ready, like jar of holy water to refill. [01:42:44] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:42:46] Speaker A: And [01:42:46] Speaker C: I'm probably down in it as well at some point because I don't know, I'm just. I'm just like caking it down because I'm really thirsty. Mixing it with Vimto. Yeah, yeah. [01:42:58] Speaker A: But yes. So you've got your crucifix. [01:43:00] Speaker C: So I got the crucifix. She doesn't, she doesn't sort of question it. She thinks I'm conferring. I go home and it's a great crucifix because it's Plastic. It's got a little Jesus on there, and it's got, like, a little hook on the top so I could thread some, you know, like, twine around it. [01:43:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:43:17] Speaker C: And where. It's [01:43:17] Speaker A: a necklace. [01:43:19] Speaker C: So I'm the only child, and I've got a dog. So I get the cape and put it around the dog, and I'd be Van Helsing, he would be Dracula. And I would run around the house sticking the cross in front of its face, and he'd run away. And we play this out, and then we would reverse it. So I put the cross on the. The dog, and he would be Van Helsing, and I would. And we just exchanged roles. But then the dog kind of, like, chewed the. The cross. He thinks it's a tie. So they. Like, a week or two past this [01:43:54] Speaker B: very. Tell us, like, 24. [01:43:58] Speaker C: Yeah. Last week. So, like, a couple of weeks pass and I go back and I say. And then I need another cross now. She's, like, beaming. [01:44:09] Speaker A: Okay. She's not skeptical. She's just like. [01:44:12] Speaker C: No. She's like, praise. Praise the Lord. [01:44:15] Speaker A: She thinks you're just hanging them all over your room. [01:44:17] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. She thinks I've got Jesus everywhere. And. And I know I'm kind of set into two camps here, so I'm kind of safe, I think, because I've got an atheist on one side and. [01:44:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:44:28] Speaker C: A believer on the other, if I'm correct in that. [01:44:31] Speaker A: Oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Oh, [01:44:35] Speaker C: sorry. Okay. [01:44:36] Speaker A: No. Okay. Once upon a [01:44:37] Speaker C: time. [01:44:38] Speaker A: Yeah. This is. That's the lore. Once upon a time, but not. Not anymore. [01:44:42] Speaker C: Okay. So I take the other cross, and this one's like a steel one. So she's obviously getting me up the rank here when it comes to, you know, the. The sort of robustness of a [01:44:52] Speaker A: cross. Yeah. [01:44:53] Speaker C: And for some reason, I think I lose that one. And then I go back and this is like the third time now. I've gone to her and I said, look, I need another cross. At this point, she stops and says, why do you need so many crosses? And I'm about to tell her that I think Jesus is the guy, you know, and he's cool. And my dad pipes up and goes, he's playing silly boogers. He's running around the house pretending to be Dracula. Come on, [01:45:27] Speaker A: Dad. B, A, G. [01:45:29] Speaker C: And then she just loses it and just nails me on it because I've just stole loads of across his. [01:45:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Just [01:45:36] Speaker C: to play. Role [01:45:37] Speaker A: play. Yeah. [01:45:38] Speaker C: Yeah. So I was then told I can't play Dracula anymore. [01:45:45] Speaker A: Oh, [01:45:46] Speaker C: and they got rid of the cape. So I was like, then I'm have to go, yeah, I'm gonna have to go back to Superman then that's my, my [01:45:54] Speaker B: default. [01:45:56] Speaker C: So for a very long time going a very long story, but for a very long time I had one of my first sort of heroes was Dracula. [01:46:05] Speaker B: Incredible. [01:46:05] Speaker C: So when I came up with the title, I was thinking, I've never explored anything to do with vampires. Let's go with it. And that's why it became a. It was just me wanting to tick that box and maybe, you know, pay homage to that little seven year old boy. And [01:46:22] Speaker B: Christopher Lee's Dracula in particular. [01:46:25] Speaker C: Yes, definitely. Yes. So it wasn't the, the universal Dracula. [01:46:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:46:29] Speaker B: So if you, if, if you were struck by vampirism, [01:46:34] Speaker A: if, [01:46:34] Speaker B: if it did come to pass that you were turned somehow and had to shoulder the burden of eternal life, is that the kind of vampire that you feel you would evolve into? Then in a few lifetimes you'd end up, you know, fucking about in, in a church coffin full of consecrated earth. [01:46:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I do like a coffin. I've often thought that it'd be really nice and cozy in that. You know, I'm, I'm not claustrophobic in any way. In fact, I like [01:47:04] Speaker A: it. [01:47:04] Speaker C: Lucky. Yeah, I like it. I like. I went through an MRI machine and I felt at home. [01:47:12] Speaker A: Wild. It's like so interesting how that works. My friend, her ex husband was like this where it's like we both had like kind of similar anxieties in various ways and have panic attacks, sex and whatnot. But like this was, whenever he was in panic mode, he wanted to be like encircled in something tight, you know, like swaddled like a baby, you know, like. [01:47:36] Speaker B: Yeah, we should do [01:47:36] Speaker A: covered, make it so. Yeah, put me in a straight jacket, things like that and absolute. Yeah, exactly. [01:47:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:47:44] Speaker A: And me, no panic. Instant panic. So interesting how that plays out. [01:47:48] Speaker C: And I think that it goes back to that thing, that childhood thing or baby thing where you know, they, they basically bind you don't, they [01:47:56] Speaker A: don't [01:47:56] Speaker C: freak [01:47:56] Speaker A: out anything [01:47:57] Speaker C: y while you're dreaming, you know, it's like [01:47:59] Speaker A: you [01:48:00] Speaker C: don't want to do that, you know, So I, I was still fearful though of vampires back then. And I would have a, I would, I came from a poor family in a workingclass area, so we only had like one duvet that lasted all year. So it was like a summer on winter duvet. But what they would give me in the winter was a sleeping bag that I could sleep inside the sleeping Bag inside the bed. [01:48:26] Speaker B: There it is. [01:48:27] Speaker C: And I would tuck the sleeping bag around my neck, you know, to stop the vampires at night trying to get to my neck. [01:48:36] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. It's so precious. [01:48:39] Speaker C: There it's. What? What's that? There it is. He's boxed. [01:48:47] Speaker B: We're [01:48:47] Speaker A: finding the roots [01:48:48] Speaker B: in, you know, in enclosed spaces. It's. It's that kind of safety and warmth, [01:48:54] Speaker A: the swaddling of childhood mixed with the protection from vampires. [01:48:58] Speaker C: Yes. [01:48:59] Speaker B: There it [01:48:59] Speaker C: is. So I would. I would sort of protect my neck. And I also had this reoccurring dream of the people, these men that were made of wax, but with no heads and a sort of wick sticking out. [01:49:14] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. [01:49:15] Speaker C: They were called the Tickly People and they. The. The person who ran the Tickly People was a Spanish flamenco lady and Jimmy Savile. [01:49:26] Speaker A: Oh, no. [01:49:26] Speaker C: And they were the head of the sort of. Say, even back then I knew he was. [01:49:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, as a child, you knew it was something very wrong there. [01:49:36] Speaker C: And they would strap me to the bed and then paste my armpits with wallpaper paste. And I would feel it in my dream. So I would kind of tuck this around my neck and then stick my hands in my armpits [01:49:48] Speaker A: to protect paste. [01:49:50] Speaker C: Yeah. From [01:49:51] Speaker A: Jimmy Savile and his people. [01:49:54] Speaker B: Effective against vampire attacks, tickly people and necrophile. [01:50:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:50:02] Speaker B: TV presenters. [01:50:04] Speaker A: Incredible. That was a recurring dream. [01:50:07] Speaker C: Yeah. And to this day, I still stick my hands in my armpits at night. [01:50:10] Speaker B: Incredible. [01:50:11] Speaker A: Fascinating. [01:50:13] Speaker C: This [01:50:13] Speaker A: is. It's very revealing. [01:50:15] Speaker C: I know I'm sharing way too much. [01:50:20] Speaker A: Listen, [01:50:20] Speaker B: we're grateful for it. [01:50:22] Speaker A: We will. We will ask the tough questions here on Showcase. Before we finish up, Mark, do you have any other last discussion? Question? [01:50:34] Speaker B: All I would say. All I would say is it's absolutely. It's a delight. Right. Something that I love about one of my favorite gimmicks. Right. One of my favorite bits in a movie or a book is when attempts are made to apply science to supernatural phenomena. Right. It's. It's the Ghostbusters gimmick. Whether you try and analyze a paranormal phenomena to try and quantify it, you talk about, you know, that sweet spot between trying to explain yourself into a corner almost and leave yourself vulnerable to what ifs and oh, buts. Return of the Living Dead gets that line really spot on with why do they brains? Well, because of the synapses in the brain. Relieves the pain of being dead. Fine. I can deal with that. That's fine. I'll just swallow it and Move on. But I. I love the almost earnest approach to outlandish phenomena. And it's a real treat to speak to somebody who has taken that approach to try and ground the otherworldly and to try and ground horror, intangible, medical, you know, the. The sensation, the pragmatics of real life. I think that's. That's always such a refreshing approach to me. Always something. It's always something I really enjoy seeing and it's been a delight to talk about. Thank you. [01:52:02] Speaker C: No, thank you. Thank you. [01:52:05] Speaker A: Well, dear friends, I highly recommend going and checking out the instruction manual to being a vampire, which I have linked in the blog to, sort of the website where you can order. You can also, you know, get the ebooks. Is it pretty much everywhere? I know it's. We had trouble with the physical copy. Can you get it pretty much anywhere? [01:52:27] Speaker C: You can get the ebook anywhere. You can obviously order straight from the publisher, Trueborn Press. It's obviously on that other place that we don't like to talk about too much. And I'm quite sure if you harangue your local, you know, indie books shop, they may get you a copy in as well. [01:52:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I would wager Gibson's would be able to get you copies of this. They've gotten me much more obscure things. And they'll [01:52:52] Speaker B: post it to anywhere. [01:52:53] Speaker A: Yes, they will send it all over the place. So go to Gibson's and make Ryan order you a copy of Craig's book and. And the other ones as well. You know, I'm two in. I'm sure I was read many more at this point. We love your perspective. So wonderful to chat with you here. Is there anything you would like to leave the listeners with before closing? And I'm putting you on the spot. [01:53:17] Speaker C: Yeah, you are. But no, just to say thank you really for, you know, I. I always enjoy these chats and it's always lovely to speak to different people about these things. And [01:53:29] Speaker B: like what [01:53:31] Speaker C: I. To have the opportunity just to speak with anybody about my work or about vampires or about horror is just. Just a joy. So thank you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. [01:53:43] Speaker A: Yes. That comes across. We'll have to have you back [01:53:45] Speaker B: again, [01:53:46] Speaker A: whether for books or just [01:53:47] Speaker B: to [01:53:47] Speaker A: shoot the shit about, you know, horror and things like that. So what else they got to do at home there, Marco? [01:53:55] Speaker B: Stay sporting, Cookie.