Part Two: The Surprisingly Complicated History of Halloween

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Jamie Loftus about all things spooky season, from Lemuria to Samhain to Allhallowtide.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Do Cool Stuff your podcast.
That's normally not about holidays, but sometimes it's about holidays.
When it's a holiday like today, which is the holiday
known as Spooky Season. That's pretty much the only thing
I ever honestly call it. I don't even call it Halloween.
I just call it spooky time.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
It is, and boy is it. I know.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Our spooky guest today is Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
I'm actually I'm worrying. I changed into my spooky sweatshirt
for a candidate that I like. This is Boo. She's trimmed,
so one of my favorite spooky clothing items.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
I love that. It's so good. We're so scary. It
just exist. It's enough to make people not sleep at night.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Kind of a just a brilliant merch line by if
you live in Sokol maybe a girl. Oh yeah, she's great,
she's the best. I just performed it her drag show
fundraiser and cops a ghost sweatshirt. Very fun.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Oh yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. The other voice
that you're hearing is Sophie. You all know this.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Oh yeah, Hi, I'm Sophie. It's me. Hi.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Our audio engineers.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Ian Hi, Ian Hi, Ian Hi, Sophie.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Now I feel like I have to, like now, I
feel like the podcast will fall apart if I don't
say Hi, Ian, Like It's like.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
No, you're right, it will. We did that and Ian's
I mean that this sounds like a very early Stephen
King novel where Ian's life will somehow fall apart.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
We better keep it up.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
I in my life. So this is important that we
do this.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah. Yeah. Our theme music is written for us by
un Woman, and this week we are talking about the
larger series of holidays that encompass Spooky Times. Spooky Times
is the large umbrella with you know all hallow Tide
and Halloween and La Muria. Everyone knows Lamia obviously, I

(02:07):
mean among us. Yeah, so today I promise you witch burning.
It's it's a weird thing to promise people, but there's
like they do some cool stuff before they get burned.
That's that's honestly. The usual format of the show is
bad things happening to good people.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Are we going to my homeland in this episode? Boston
just Massachusetts Salem adjacent, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Not so much. Now we're gonna it's gonna be mostly
Scottish Wish trials. Oh, okay, interesting, but well before we
get to that, a thousand years before the early Catholic Church,
They're like, we should have a day to celebrate all
of our martyrs since people keep getting like flate alive
and crucified in shipt for being Christian, because there was
a period of time, very long time ago when anti

(02:52):
Christian impression was real for a couple hundred years. Different
areas use different days of you know, different calend days
for this. Some people use May thirteenth, the day of Lemuria.
I read one source claim of the earliest name of
the saint's remembrance day was Lamuria, but I suspect that
I was not able to confirm that. Okay, in either

(03:14):
the year six hundred and nine or six hundred and ten,
Pope Boniface the Fourth whose name should be Boniface, but
it is not for some weird reason.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Oh, I was like, is there a fun reason or did.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
You know just spell Boniface?

Speaker 1 (03:27):
And who is such a bummer when they're like and
the name is less fun now? And who can say why?

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah? All right, so Boniface the Fourth formalized the day
to May thirteenth, and was like fuck yeah, fuckla Muria.
That's what it is exactly how he said, Shitmuria. Yeah, yeah,
he was a big shitstirr.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Sorry, I.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
And friend of the Pod. Syncretism is happening all over Europe, right, ye,
people are christianizing a name and then continuing to do
whatever they actually want to do. In both, everyone's died
laughing because of something that the leader the listener doesn't
get to know. I just died.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Feless the way you said. It's so good. Sorry listeners,
you will never never know either. There are some things
that you're not trace that we are protecting you.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah. So in both Bavaria, which is now part of
Germany and the British Isles, people were like, you know,
I know that Boniface said we should do it on
the May thirteenth, but what about November first, since that's
kind of when we want to do it, and when
we do this kind of shit anyway, that's our like
dead day anyway.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Probably, So it's sort of like, let's just fold it
into the dead the existing dead day we have.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, okay. And so also people were like, and also
we should celebrate All Saints seat of just the Martyred
Saints in an all Saints matter way.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
And I was like, whoa, Okay, this son is familiar,
but not in the same way.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Right, No, rights, Also the like Saint all Saints versus
like the Martyred Saints. You mean, yeah, I am under
the impression. So these names get really blurry or not blurry.
They change what they mean in ways that don't make
sense to me. Okay, because let's see, so well, we'll

(05:33):
get to it. By the year eight hundred, you've got
the Feast of All Saints spreading throughout the Christian world
because like All Saints Day wasn't necessarily these these names
didn't show up till later overall, so you get the
Feast of All Saints spreading around the Christian world around
the year eight hundred or so, except for the Eastern
Orthodox Church, which is like, we did. Our whole thing
is that we don't change our holidays for you motherfuckers.

(05:55):
So they kept theirs in the spring fifty days after
no on the Sunday after Pentecost, which is fifty days
after Easter, which I don't remember how to pick when. Anyway,
it's a spring thing for them.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Some people say that November first was picked because a Sowen.
Other people was like, no, the Germans did at first
and had nothing to do with sowen. See the aforementioned
people arguing about fucking everything constantly.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
By the year eighteen thirty five, Pope Gregory the fourth
was like, sure, fine, what the fuck ever, Well, just
it's on November first. It's that's it, and you get
All Saints Day as we know it today, except no
one knows All Saints Day. People know Halloween. Then you
get All Souls Day the day after. Together it gets
the name All Hallows Tied or All hallow Tied, and

(06:44):
it's a holiday of remembering the dead, especially the people
who died in the last year. It's a day of
putting up memorial plaques, of lighting candles, of talking with
your dead friends. In Finland, which is largely Lutheran, graveyards
are a sea of light, as candles are placed on
graves in some places and where in Europe chrysanthemums are
placed on graves. In some places, people leave meals on

(07:04):
the graves of the dead. Some places, it's slightly different everywhere,
but it's like spooky and interesting. Honestly. Some places insist
that the celebrations on the day be all somber and
serious and quiet. But then Halloween October thirty first, have
you didn't I actually didn't even know the etymology of Halloween.

(07:24):
I feel like a poser. Have you heard the like
how it's Halloween? No, No, it's the Scot's abbreviation for
All Hallows Eve because evening was shortened to een.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Oh it's okay, wow, that is very Scottish as them
to do. So they just so the various punctuation just
like cycles itself out over time.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, and you see people when they're like trying to
be a little bit like spooky, or maybe they just
actually live somewhere where people still do this, there'll still
be an apostrophe between the two ease.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, that also just sounds like, yeah, like someone in
my neighborhood who had really who's really trying to prove something?

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah? Absolutely, all Pedants Eve. And the reason it's all
Hollows Day is because All Saints Day and Sainted and
Hallowed are sort of synonymous, right, So all Hallows all
Saints sometimes called hallow Mass, which is a way more
metal word for it.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Absolutely, And then you get all Souls Day on November two,
the day after lots of places conflate all Saints Day
and all Souls Day and are like, whatever is just
the day for everyone who's dead?

Speaker 1 (08:29):
And then I and maybe this is not the focus
of this episode, but like, how does the Day of
the Dead square with all of this too? Like was
that shifted from what? Was that always November first? Or
did that shift at any point in time?

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Okay, so I'm glad, Slush terrified you asked. I thought
about including this in the scripts, and I decided not to,
But now I'll just talk about it. There is a
hot debate about whether or not Day of the Dead
pre days Christianity, and there are pro Indigenous arguments on
both sides. Okay, are like no, this was a Christianization
of a thing, and other people being like, no, it wasn't.

(09:06):
I don't know. It's kind of the answer. It is
just mostly presented as that this is a specific indigenous
tradition or a pre Christian tradition that has always been
on this date. However, there are a lot of historians,
including indigenous historians in Mexico, who are making the argument
that that was like a specific propaganda thing in order

(09:31):
to do something and I don't know the answer.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Interesting. Yeah, I truly was just curious where I was like, yeah,
it felt naive to be like, wow, all cultures agree
that this is just kind of the vibe this time
of year, but I just didn't know.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
That's kind of where I came into it thinking, right,
because it's like, it makes sense to me that as
you watch the leaves fall off the.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Trees and yeah, like death rebirth.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, like I think probably a ton of cultures like
and there's actually a bunch of East Asian and maybe
Southeast Asian cultures where a lot of the specific traditions
are also way pre date Christianity, and so like, I
think there is a vibe of this pre dating Christianity
all over the world. But it's like like I just

(10:18):
straight up don't know enough. I spent a while trying
to research it.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
That's fast. I mean, I don't know nearly enough about
Dadlis Martos. And there's I mean like because I live
close to the border, like there's a ton of celebration
and I just didn't know if it was connected.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Okay, interesting, and then the other thing is like once
again it's like shit that comes out of some criticism
is still fucking beautiful, and like what part of it
came from what? Like, it is still absolutely a cultural
thing that is beautiful in matters, you know, and absolutely so,

(10:54):
and so with all Hollis Tide, All Saints Day is
for celebrating not just the Saints, but everyone who's made
it into Heaven. Where's all souls Day is a day
for praying for everyone who's trapped in purgatory. And since
most Protestants don't believe in purgatory, they don't they leave
that one out.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Okay, that's so interesting that because I think because I
grew up such a like an amalgam of Christianity of
kind of like whatever was around, whatever was available, and
whatever it was not homophobic, that would be the place
we would go. And so I feel like the little
shades of gray and like Protestants don't believe in purgatory,
didn't know and technically grew up Protestant at various times.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, well, and different Protestant denominations do and don't believe
in purgatory, but overall that's like kind of one of
the like it's usually the ones that are a little
bit closer to Catholicism that still don't believe in purgatory,
and then man, I felt on so many rabbit holes. Anyway,
people don't need to know about Catholic universalism. So the

(11:57):
idea that some people argue about whether everyone goes into
have or whether some people stay in like, it's all
fucking people like to argue about weird shit, about stuff
that no one can see, and it's kind of interesting.
And so the reason that Halloween is celebrated is that
the early Church follow the Jewish tradition and the Celtic
tradition also in a bunch of other places tradition. And
the day starts the night before at sundown, so like,

(12:22):
which makes sense because at first you're like, why would
the day start? Then you're like, well, the last day's over,
isn't it right right, So like, so the new day starts,
and so you have all Hallow's Day starts with all
hollows eve the night before.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, And it's a cool holiday. The whole thing celebrating
your ancestors is fucking cool. Getting in touch with dead
is really useful for people, whether or not there's an afterlife.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
I always was curious if you could be choosy about
which ancestors you do and do not want to welcome,
you know, probably because they're you know, not everyone has
the ancestors that they would be like, yeah, everyone come back.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
You know.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, now yeah, you probably like you put up like
a specific like John, stay out. You know, I killed
you for a reason. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah. The people, for example, your ancestors who you personally
have murdered, you're not going to want them back.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, totally. I built a time machine. It was very expensive.
So you've got these three holidays by the ninth century.
By the ninth century, you've got the trade one which
I did not know the word, which is a name
for a three day holiday. Okay, except for hundreds of
years it was an octave, an eight day holiday, because

(13:37):
everyone has always known that spooky season should be given
some fucking breathing room. Sowyn was usually three days before
and three days after November one, so for a full
week of spook times. And so the medieval period goes onward,
and you know now that we've got the holiday, and
now the medieval period hits, and the medieval period sucked

(13:57):
for a lot of people. During death, people in Europe
got really interested in death for some weird reason amadically,
and now you get that done. I know, Oh my god,
one day I'll do an episode about the like the
Black Death in women's rights, about how like women got
like so much more power in the Middle Ages after

(14:20):
everyone died, because then like they were allowed to like
own more property and like run more stuff because the
people are.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
It's like World War two lodgic. Yeah, yes, I can
we talk about that?

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah sure, Well, I only know I would need to
do more research. I have that level of it right now.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
That's so cool and also so depressing.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
I know. And then there's also stuff where, like, at
least by late medieval period, I think in Western Europe,
women could own property if they were unmarried, and so
there's like all these women like trying to figure out
ways to stay unmarried. See our episode about murder their husbands.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Wow, So did it set off like a black widow
epidemic kind of?

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Well, the black widow stuff that was a couple hundred
years later. The at least the episodes that we did
was on the like aquatafauna and the like the like
famous Italian poisoners and stuff like that, and how those
just this thing where like the same lady you go
to for your your astrology and your abortion will also
like give you poison to kill your husband if he sucks.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
That's what happened in House of Gucci. Okay, I can
get see you're wondering.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
I've never even heard of it. I don't know how
Scucci is.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
That's all right, that meant something to someone, that's.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Okay, it matters. So because of Black Death, you get
the Don's macabre, the dance of death, the image of
happy dancing skeletons, and like people are just like really
kind of thinking about dying a lot for some weird reason.
The other thing that happened, so that ties into some
Halloween symbolism. That's why I'm tying throwing that part in.
The other thing that ties into Halloween way more than

(15:57):
I thought it would. It's the fucking witch hunts. You know,
people talk about like human progresses if it's linear, and
that's obviously not true.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
During most of the medieval period, the Catholic Church didn't
give a fuck about witches because witchcraft wasn't real, so
it was just pagan superstition. So why would you burn
people over superstition, which is very similar to the argument
that people nowadays make about the witch trials.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Also right, interesting, I'm like, okay, let them cook. I'm like, yeah,
unfortunately they cooked up some real shit. Just stirred that
shit in the cauldron.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah. So, according to early medieval stuff, no one was
consorting with the devil. That's nonsense. He's not like a
guy who shows up and.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
He's like, ah, not a sexy guy that you'd want
to hang out with. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, there was no need to burn people at the
stake about it. The first not the first inquisition, the
an inquisition that I don't know enough to say is
the first. But the Catholic Church put together an inquisition
in southern France and twelve thirty three, and this was
to kill not witches but the weird heretical pescatarian communists, cultists,

(17:13):
the Cathars who may or may not be future friends
of the pot. But they're actually only like they're more
like interesting than like cool. Anyway, the inquisition sticks around,
they kill a witch here or there. You start getting
more and more like witch laws on stuff. But it's
not a it's like a thing that can happen, but
you don't have the specific witches hang out with the
devil thing until several hundred years later. Interesting, by the

(17:37):
end of the sixteenth century you get witch trials in
fucking earnest. Protestants and Catholics like to argue about who
was more evil during the witch hunts. Catholics pull ahead
overall more evil because the witch hunts in southwest Germany
were the most brutal anywhere in Europe.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Rare w for Protestants.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, but as relates to Sowyn and Halloween and spooky season,
we're gonna look over at Scotland where Protestants were really
unhappy about the syncretic Catholics and all their pagany goodness.
And also they didn't like that people were like doing
divination and playing mash and performing health care.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Oh well, how dare they?

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, So the witch hunts were a war on women,
they were a warren traditional healing, they were a war
on Syncriticism, and they were a consolidation of power by
various Christian sects. The pagan horn gods are like the
fucking devil. This is where you start to see diabolic witchery.
You see the devil fucking witches and which is really

(18:43):
interesting to me, is this like symbolism because one because
it's hot, Two because the nuns are married to Jesus
but never fuck. I mean they fuck each other, but
they never get to fuck their husband.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Right, they all get to fuck Jesus.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, whereas witches aren't married to Satan, but they get
to fuck him and each other constantly.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Right, Yes, it seems like almost a better deal as
long as as long as the proper consent is being exchanged.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, And there's just two strange sides of medieval saphism
as far as I can tell. Excellent. One day, well,
one day I'm gonna do an episode about the women
who led peasant revolves and stuff. But first I'm going
to tell you about six sick deals. You can go

(19:26):
to the store and.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
Buy stuff once again, you got my ass?

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, Like just like show up with like a symbol,
like a little like thing like a green piece of
paper that says five on it, and that's enough. Well
now it's not enough for shit. You can't even fucking.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
I's going on a rant again about in this economy.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
In this economy, you can't even just write five on
a piece of paper and trade it for food anymore.
But what you can do is listen to ads or
oh hey, cool Zone media directly by setting up for
cool is the Media, and then you don't have to
hear ads. And either way, it supports people making podcasts

(20:05):
that you all clearly don't hate because you're listening, unless
you're hate listening, in which case what are you doing
with your life?

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Sometimes I'm like, if you're hate listening, uh, I've passed
the point where I'm going to scold you for it.
I know, A streams a stream.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to just say things in order
to get people to know I'm not going to do that. Uh.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Jokes on you, bitch.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
You played yourself. Yeah, that's right, just like you're about
to play these ads. Yea, And we're back. So I'm
going to quote from an anonymous article called Devil's Night
that was republished by a public a press called ill Will,
and it was originally published in Mass magazine. It's anonymous,

(20:53):
so I have to give you all these things so
if anyone has a chance to possibly find it. It
talks about a book by Sylvia Federici called Calaban the
Witch quote, which is just the book that kind of
does the most of discussing the witch hunts as like
a war on women and ties it into primitive accumulation

(21:14):
and all this kind of interesting theory stuff. But here's
our quote. Federici traces the lineage of this coordinated mass
murder beyond just the Christian elitees fear of paganism into
a whole world of popular peasant revolts and the powerful,
undomesticated women who likely organized them. By highlighting that many
of these women lived alone, relied on public assistance, were

(21:36):
sexually promiscuous, and encouraged nonprocreative sex by means of contraception
and abortions. I know, early state builders were able to
target these embodied impediments to patriarchal governance, heteronormativity, population growth,
compulsory labor, domestication, and social order, in a word, civilization

(21:57):
by portraying them as enemies to life self and so
basically they kind of create the category of witch. Like
there wasn't a before the witch hunts. There was a
bunch of different people doing witchy things under a bunch
of names, and they were diverse people, living diverse lives,
but outside the new social norm that was being built

(22:20):
up as like the Christian state was being made, you know,
and so they get accused of murdering infants, and therefore
let's murder all of them and anyone who's ever looked
at them.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, I think it is, I mean whatever, far from
the first person to make this observation, but the idea
that like, if you are not having sex in the
interest of creating infants, then surely you have a vested
interest in killing existing infants. Where you're just like, what
is this like perverted lodge, you know, like the idea

(22:55):
of like I don't know, just like not wanting an
infant yourself, not even in it, you know, indefinite sense,
but just today equals that you wish all babies dead.
Which I think that there is still a version of
that logic that exists now, but you know, it's just
like such baby little bean brain logic. All right, Well,

(23:21):
these these these witches sound great.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, you know, they're they're they're.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
They're sucking, fucking, and mining their own business. Yeah, the
three amazing qualities.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, exactly. And one of the things that actually surprised
me to learn this anti witch hysteria wasn't as populist
as people think before there was the mass hysteria, and
like neighbor accusing neighbor, there were people who literally went
town to town and taught people how to be pieces

(23:52):
of shit about this.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
They would like, I mean that feels familiar. Yeah, YouTube
was for for a while.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, exactly, And so they would teach people how to
recognize witches. And before that everyone's like, whatever, it's the
lady who like, you know, means that I can continue
to cheating my husband or whatever, you know.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
An important part of society.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, this is so, which means that the witch hunts
were in many ways top down, and we're going to
take it all the way up to the top. That's
not a we're gonna we're gonna tie it into a
king pretty soon, okay, but it is a a top
down method of the destruction of women and wildness and freedom.
Because something that's come up before on the show is
that in the medieval European mind, the idea of womanness

(24:37):
was wildness, irrationality, chaos and like non civilization. Excellent, Yeah,
I know, I'll take it.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
And as for the witch's Sabbath, the midnight gathering of women,
these might have happened, right like the women would go
and fucking go do things in the woods. It's like
a thing people would probably do, right, They would do
this for a thousand different reason. One of them was
probably peasants plotting revolts against classic enemy of the pod,

(25:05):
the Enclosure of the Commons, which is happening. I promised
you I'd work in the enclosure of the Commons.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
That's something that I never had really considered. But also
it makes total sense where it's like, why are they
always in the woods? It's a go. Perhaps they are
evading surveillance. Maybe that's maybe they don't feel safe outside.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, is anything changing about society? And are there armed
revolts around it? Hmmm, must be unrelated to what women
are doing.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Why would you go to a place where you maybe
couldn't be as easily detected.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, fascinating, Okay, okay. And then as a tangent, but
just while people have their Bengo cards out and we
just crossed off, Margret talks about the Enclosure of the Commons.
I can tie the industrial workers of the world into Halloween.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
God damn it serious.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Because one of their logos, one of their old logos,
is a black cat called Sabo cat great, and it
is absolutely and intentionally a witch style old cat with
like hair raised and stuff, you know, and it is
the symbol for industrial sabotage done by the workers. Anyway,
witch hunts. Why do these witch hunts tie to Halloween?

(26:13):
Besides of course witches being cool, right, and Halloween being cool.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
And black cats being cool.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Oh yeah, Unfortunately, the way that they get tight well
we'll hear about it. So this is the same medieval
period where the holiday that the Christians built starts turning
on them, right, they built this Halloween holiday, Halloween comes from.
I mean, you know, it has a lot of these
roots and these other things, but it is like a
pretty actually Christian holiday. But it also then becomes the

(26:41):
time of witches, sabbaths and black magic. And to quote
a writer named Louisia Morro, the choice of all hallows
all hollows as a major holiday for witches and devils
was no doubt coerced from the accused with a political
agenda in mind. Because there's this king and he's a bastard.

(27:04):
All kings are bastard, but this guy, there's another a
cap the other.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, just a kind of like spelling cool with a K.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
I know, although I usually hate when anyone replaces a
C with a K. It's usually a bad sign.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, but but you know, in this case, if at
least applicable, exactly cool.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, this king is extra bad, as I have learned
by guests telling me I should not say he is
a baddie, but it's instead.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Bad Margaret, Yeah, I wish I could have been the
one to tell you, yeah, baddie. The vernacular is shifted
in a way that I'm very in favor of.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, oh yeah, no, totally yeah, I'm I know things
now I didn't many ways say that you yourself are
perhaps a baddie. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah, you're welcome.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
So there's a king named King James the sixth and
first he is I'm assuming both. Yeah, no, absolutely boo,
he is both because of some nonsensical rich people bullshit.
In fifteen eighty nine, he sails off to Denmark to
marry his queen to be Anne of Denmark, but a
furious storm rose up and he was driven to shore elsewhere.

(28:13):
He had had to divert his fleet, and he consulted
with a Danish demonologist, and the guy was like witches,
definitely witches. That's how you got the storm totally was
a bunch of witches.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Check please, I know I suspect it's witches. That will
be one thousand medieval dollars.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Thank you. Of course, if your job is demonologist, what
answer do you think the guy's going to give.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
You, really one of the best scams going to this day, demonologist,
easy money. Yeah, I suspect it as a demon yeah,
quoth whomever? Yeah? Great.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
And if there's two things that King James the sixth
and first, I don't understand why you can't add them together,
be the seventh there are two things he hated. It
was witches and it was women.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Oh well, surely these things aren't connected.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
No, and he's not one of the people who did. Actually,
a lot of the connection of the two actually start
tying into your uncle's job.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
All right.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
If there's a third thing he hates, it's Catholics, but
we'll tie that in later.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
So there are two witches, sorry, two witch hunts in
two different countries related to this one storm. First, in Denmark,
thirteen women are arrested and burned at the stake, including
Anna Colding's mother of the devil, which is a sick
title to earn, you.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Know, yeah, I mean yeah, if nothing else.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, and we know they were guilty because after they
can they confessed, after torture, and they confess that they
caused the storm by summoning demons to hide aboard the ship,
who then climbed up the masts and caused the storm.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Sure, and I mean they were only provoked successively to
near death to have to admit this.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, Well, women are saying, you know, they don't like
telling the truth, right, we are famously liars. Yeah, totally,
we all know this. Yeah, the room is absolutely completely bright.
What are you talking about? So thirteen dead women is
not enough for King James, also known as the person
who oversaw the translation of the Bible that right wing

(30:24):
people love today. No way, Yeah, the King James Bible.
And then actually, what's funny is that.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
With the chances there's been so many of those motherfuckers
and it's that one.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah. And one of the reasons that it's like people
like it, it's a really beautiful translation because he was
a Yeah, he was a gay man who really liked
things to be pretty and like put a lot of
care into stuff.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
But anyway, we have to that's a best for another day. Yeah,
good lord, So.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
He needs to kill some more women. What if Scottish
women were in on it too. Scott is soon going
to be one of the world leaders in the murder
of women. But at this point there weren't too many
witch trials there actually, partly because in this place the
Catholics were kind of on the like whatever, syncretism is fine,
who gives a shit?

Speaker 1 (31:13):
You know, kind of a nascent industry. Yeah, yeah, but
I bet someone's going to be like, wait, there's potential
for growth and always the industry of dealing with it.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah. And actually a lot of the people get accused
of witchcraft are very high up in their towns, and
I'm certain that there's like direct political things behind all
of it. You know, sure makes sense. So they've arrested
a serving girl named Gellye Duncan, and I think this.
I think she was arrested prior to the I read
a bunch of articles about this, but they're all very
like popit. I mean, I run a pop history podcast.

(31:44):
I can't really complain, but like, anyway, she's arrested and
her employer knows she's It's pretty sure she's a witch
because she one is really good at healing. How fucking
weird is that? And two sometimes she sneaks out at
night from the house that she's like forced to live
in as a serving girl. All very suspicious, but it

(32:09):
becomes even more obviously just a witch because they strip
her naked and shave her head to toe and lo
and behold, Yeah, there's gonna be some misogynst violence in here.
I'll try not to linger on it. Lo and behold,
she has a birthmark on her neck. The proof is
right there. And she denied everything at first, but fortunately
they got the truth out of her after a while somehow,

(32:32):
and she confessed and named names.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
So surely no one shaving her had birthmarks themselves, that
would be that would be shocking.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, yeah, No, one just has birthmarks. That's not why
they're called birthmarks, although they specifically call them devil's marks,
and specifically the devil would lick you in intimate places
and sometimes it would leave a mark.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
That's something that I my mom would tell me, not
from the devil but God. The reason that we have
they'll ridge fil between the nose is that before you
leave Heaven to be born, God goes sh and puts
his finger and it just is shut tell me my secrets.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Oh okay, and.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Then show and then shoves you down though whatever, oh
that you go through to be born. But yeah, it
was like the shush, the shut the fuck up mark,
oh that all humans have. And if you meet someone
that doesn't have to shut the fuck up, Mark, they
know shit and they'll tell.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
You okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
So after she reveals the secrets.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
She didn't have to shut the fuck up Mark.

Speaker 4 (33:40):
No.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Between sixty and two hundred witches, mostly but not exclusively
women are now put on trial. And it's a fun
historical note to tie into your uncle. About ten to
fifteen percent of the people killed for being witches and
medieval Europe were men, and the concept of dividing it
between witch and wizard or warlock is more modern coming

(34:04):
centuries later, once again showing that progress isn't linear because
I think men could be witches.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
It's truly why not? And also just to like equalize
justifying killing them for no reason.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yeah, yeah, totally. So there are these huge trials, the
Berwick witch Trials, and King James the sixth then first
shows up in person. He's only one guy because he's
fucking obsessed with witchcraft and he's trying to figure out
you know, oh they fucking cause the storm, right, you
know all these witches, and there's one witch who is

(34:40):
the evilest and baddest witch of them all, Agnes Samson.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
She's a baddie. She is a baddie, yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Because she's gonna do some She does some cool shit.
It has some negative consequences, but it's worth it, all right.
So she's torture for days before the trial. She's left
Shane to a wall by her face using what's called
a witch's bridle or a scolds bridle or a nag's bridle.
Have you heard of this?

Speaker 1 (35:04):
For fox sake? I don't. Maybe I would visually recognize that.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
It is a device that goes over the head and
like forces a bit into the victim's mouth to keep
it from talking. Sometimes the spikes on the inside of it.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, I do know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
I had to look this one up to check if
it was real, because I'm very like fool me once
about the Iron Maiden. Sure, because the Iron Maiden is
a nineteenth century invention where they were like look how
barbaric the medieval people were, and they like made up
a thing. Medieval people absolutely would have used the Iron Maiden.
They just didn't happen to think of it.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
They did.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Like I cut out so much torture and execution methods
from the show every now and then I feel like
I have to include it to like give a picture
of it. I have read so many ways that medieval
people have killed each other, usually by way.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Why would they be like, no, this is where I
draw the line. Yeah, it's just it was a lie
of ingenuity. No one could live long enough to have
that idea.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah, exactly because they kept getting thrown into, thrown off
of rooftops and sacks.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
So there's absolutely the scolds bridle, and it is absolutely
a shut the fuck up woman, It's just a it's
just a tool misogyny. Also real and deployed during the
interrogations was the breast ripper, which is does what it
says it does, okay, and it is a way to
remove parts of people's bodies. Could you imagine inventing the

(36:33):
breast ripper and thinking you are on the side of
the angels.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
I unfortunately can very clearly hear someone saying that and
believing it.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, I guess that's the problem with like religious systems
like this. So Agnes Sampson, after days chained to a
wall by her face, she confesses, and according to her
torture confessions, these witches, mostly women, hundreds of them, slipped

(37:04):
into the woods at night to dance with the devil
and kiss his butt cheeks. Since then, and since they
hated James just so so much and they just didn't
want to be happy, right, you know, they went to
the graveyard, disinterred corpses, cut them up, and then on
sowin they rode out into see into the sea in sieves,
which was like a classic witch thing is to Yeah,

(37:28):
then tied either living or dead cats depending on which
version you read, to the body parts, and then throw
them into the water. This summoned the storm that almost
killed James. Never mind the fact that other witches had
had already confessed and been executed for the exact same crime.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
I just always find it interesting that, I mean, it's
evil and there's like such a long history of it,
but just like the logic behind being like and they
figured this out, You're like, what sort of scientific method
process don't think this went through. Like we tried like
strapping rabbits and to corpses, but that the results you know,

(38:12):
kind of diminishing returns there. So then we started slaughtering cats,
and then we started slaughtering like.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
It's just I mean it is, it's obviously absurd, but
it's just it just feels like there's no like even
ADUs c much less further, it's what goofballs that were
needlessly slaughtering women, I know, what dufises.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
What fools And the imagination of one side where they're
like and this is how we like summon the storm
is like way less harmful than the imagination of what
new ways can we come up with the torture and
murder people? You know, right? Yeah, So King James shows
up and he goes in person and supposedly he this
is like where he like he like starts off skeptical.

(38:56):
He's like, I don't know if I even believe in witches,
and I actually don't buy that part. But you know,
since he's like the evil Molder, he wants to believe.
And so Agnes Samson, she's like, you know what, fuck
this guy, you don't believe her witches come here. She
leans in. He leans in close to her, and she
whispers into his ear and she tells him the private

(39:18):
details of his own wedding night.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Oh, I like her.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
This to James proves that she's a witch. Don't get
me wrong. I hope she was. But apparently royal wedding
nights were literally public events. There were court people in
attendance to make sure the wedding was consummated.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
I believe. I mean that tracks. Yeah, so was she
just like kind of reading an article to him and
he's like, oh, reading the public record back to him, right,
Like either some gossip got out or she did magic,
or she did the thing that every fortune teller in

(40:02):
history knows how to do, which is a cold read.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah, or you know, say what they're what you think
is likely?

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, Like you know you like what you did technically,
fuck but you weren't very good at it.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
He's like, you like me more, which is true in
this case.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
How could that? How could she know? Yeah, we got
a killer?

Speaker 2 (40:25):
She knows I'm gay, And I'm like sad because it's
like such a good owned to do, Like be like, fine,
fuck you I am a witch right before you die
to spoiler alert, she does not survive this. On the
other hand, he goes, well, we'll tell you what he does,
but first I want to tell you about Oh, what's

(40:46):
what's what sponsor should we have for this podcast? Cats
live ones that you don't if you do magic with them,
it's like they're willing participants. This brought to you by Familiars.
That is our sponsor this week is Familiars love that. Yeah,

(41:06):
and nothing familiar is only yeah. Now hopefully you don't
hear anything else. If it was, it was a mistake
and we're back. So about probably about sixty people were
executed at the end of this trial. I've read all
kinds of numbers and this is a very consequential event

(41:27):
in history. This opened the floodgates for witch trials in Scotland.
There are three thy one hundred accused witches in Scotland.
Over the next hundred years, thirteen hundred of them are executed.
It also turned James into an anti witchcraft zealot. He
wrote a whole fucking book called Demonologies that actually talks

(41:50):
about Lamurres, the ghosts from Pagan Rome and call Back
to Monday.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
That's so funny that it's like I mean today with
like today algorith my logic would be, like you enjoyed
the King James Bible, would you want to read Demonologists
by King James relevant to your interest?

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Well, but that's not that, because yeah, his big thing.
He wasn't like writing being like, obviously everyone knows about
witches and demons and so I'm just going to write
down it. He was trying to convince people that they
were real. Because this is even though the witch trials
are starting to kick in overall, people are like, what
are you fucking talking about? This is some superstitious nonsense.

(42:33):
The devil isn't hanging out in the woods with horns
making ladies kisses butt.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Oh but is he just like doubling down and down
and down until people sort of start to capitulate to it.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Yeah, and he's fucking king, which is a he.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
It's true.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
And so in this book he writes about women. It's
it's not very progressive.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Of quote, not a have to cancel k chain.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah, a problematic king.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
That's a brutal quote.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
What can be the cause that there are twenty women
given to that craft where there is one man? The
reason is easy, whereas that sex is frailer than man is,
So it is it easier to be entrapped in these
gross snares of the devil, as was overwell prove it
provided to be true by the serpents deceiving Eve at
the beginning, which makes him the more familiar with that

(43:33):
sex since that time.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Trauma queen. Yeah yeah, all right, well let him cook.
I'm sure he's working up says some cool ideas.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Yeah. The Trials also cemented Sowyn as the time for
which is to dance with the devil and kiss a
sweet button. My theory, he was probably walking up and
down out of Hell, working ouse glutes.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
You know, sure, yeah, you get to. I mean, look,
witches aren't kissing that butt for nothing. There's some there's
some appeal to that butt. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
They were pretty much just millennials ahead of their time.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Real worship of the butt. Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
The sailing and a sieve was cemented forever by Shakespeare
soon after, when the witches of Macbeth say, but in
a sieve, i'll thither sail, and like a rat without
a tail, i'll sew, I'll do, I'll do, And then
they conjure up a storm. Now, King James also hated Catholics,

(44:42):
and this is tied into it because Scotland was like
kind of on a like what if we don't burn
all our healers alive and what.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
If we didn't light every woman interested in ostensibly science
on fire?

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah, yeah, totally. And so James is like, he's Protestant.
That's a big hole, big complicated thing. It's a big
part of his identity. And Catholics have always been distrusted
by various rulers because of foreign allegiances, and England didn't
like having the Catholic Highlands in Scotland since France was,
you know, Catholic and France is the bad guy forever, right,

(45:18):
and then also their forgiveness for syncretics got the Catholics
branded as Pagans by the Anglicans. I'm fine with this. Also,
the Catholics deified Mary, and James is a misogynist, so
he's like, well, what the fuck? They basically worship a women,
you know, and you know, since the Catholics were into
having a goddess Mary and women were irrational, so I
better go kill thirteen hundred women in Scotland.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
I mean, yeah, we're just using logic that makes total sense.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Yeah, Now, for all your numerology heads, I'm not when
I hate this stuff. I'm just making a joke with this.
What ties into the conspiracy to kill King James the
sixth and the one?

Speaker 1 (45:58):
Right, I'm like not against that, honestly.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Okay, Okay, V for Vendetta V five right eh, Okay,
if you remove the if you subtract the one from
the anyway, whatever the fuck. Okay. So the other conspiracy
that tried to kill fucking James was the V for Vendetta.
Guy the fifth of November, you said you'd never forget
Jamie Guy Fox.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
I remembered him. I see his little mask a spirit
Halloween and Burbank I remember him, I know.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
And like God, I would be so mad if I
was Alan Moore where I wrote this like anarchist superhero
and then the only people who do anything with it
are absolutely shit.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
It fuckings like it's it is like you're it is
a beautiful thing. The art is out of your control.
But then it's like, ask Alan Moore about that and
see how he fucking feels. Because there's some real there's
some real outliers.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah. So the Gunpowder plot where Guy FOWX tried to
blow Parliament or whatever. He was trying to kill King
James of too many numbers, and he was trying to
kill him for his repression of the Catholics, which means
we can sort of tangentially claim that guy Fox is
on the side of the witches. But this is me
making a stretch. But I want to make that stretch

(47:16):
because it feels good and just you know, stretching it
feel it?

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Does you know?

Speaker 2 (47:19):
It feels good to stretch. Yeah. But also his Fifth
of November ties directly into Halloween. Really, it was for
decades after the seventeenth century, decades it was celebrated on
the same day as Halloween, the fifth of November thing
the like fuck the Pope, we hate all the Catholics day,

(47:41):
uh huh. And then eventually the Protestants were like in
sixteen forty seven, they were like, look, we're fine with
the anti Catholic bonfires, but note of the fact Halloween
fun having, and the general like like, could you keep
it a little more focused on just hating Catholics. We
don't like fun. But the riotous elements of we hate
Atholics Day filtered down into the mischief of Halloween, which

(48:03):
we'll talk about it a little bit interesting.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
As we get closed, as we close out the medieval era,
we start seeing Halloween like we know it now. There's strange,
syncretic rituals. There's mischief, there's cross dressing and costuming, there's
door to door acquisition of snacks, there's jack o lanterns,
all that good stuff. These are all hundreds of years old.
We especially see them in Ireland, in Scotland, and when
the immigrants from these countries start showing up in larger

(48:28):
numbers in the US, we see it here too. So
thanks potato famine for giving us Halloween drunken public revelry.
In the sixteenth century, people started demanding contributions from passerbys
and neighbors to carry on their hedonism, like they were
all like run around and these are actually a lot
of these are the like we hate Catholic Day stuff.

(48:51):
In the seventeenth century, you start getting public choir performances
where people men and women alike as best as I
can tell, would dress up as maidens with like the
hoods and stuff, you know, like old timy medieval women's clothes,
and then sing songs about wanting to get fucked.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Okay, this is.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
One of the potential origins of the costuming of Halloween.
There's other ones too, specifically people dressing up to emulate
the spirits and things like that.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
Cool.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
The Mischief Night in England was on November fifth, and
people went from burning effigies the Pope to burning effigies
of any politician they didn't like. People went around door
to door demanding contributions of firewood and money from the
rich for their celebrations. Cool, and I promised you purge reference,
it was seen as justifiable to steal firewood from anyone

(49:38):
who denied it, and it became a night of permission,
not a It was more of a go poach rabbits
on rich people's land, and not to kill your neighbor's thing.

Speaker 1 (49:48):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
But anyone who is unpopular in your neighborhood, especially if
you're rich and unpopular, we see your windows broken and
your garden's uprooted.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
That is really I really like reframing the purge as
a night of permission. Yeah, it's just like kind of
a softer, more fun way of putting it, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Exactly, Mischief. Mischief Night comes over later to the US
as October thirtieth, Halloween en as I guess you could
call it. But before that, mummery starts showing up at
this point in the British Isles, which is the practice
of costuming and wild costumes and performing door to door
and demanding food, booze, and money, which is probably the

(50:29):
most logical origin of trick or treating, although there's the
stuff that comes before it, like dressing up as.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Let's bring it back the other two though, Like yeah, also,
while I've got you here with my kid dressed as Scoopy,
give me like beer and twenty dollars.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
I thought you were gonna say, like I thought you're
saying about the wanting to get fucked part.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Oh and for a grand finale yeah fuck me raw
yeah yeah yeah, that's just neighborly.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Yeah. Absolutely, it's a night of permission.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
And so the more ritual side of this mummery and
the and all of this is dressing up as the
spirits and offering good fortune for those who donate to
your cause. So the pious would bake soul cakes, which
are sweet biscuits to commemorate the dead, and then give
them out to the soulers who would pray for their souls. Basically,
it's like you go around, you'd be like, hey, give

(51:31):
me a soul cake, and I will pray for the
people that you baked, that you've thought about as you
baked these cakes.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Okay, that feels like a very Christian concept, like prayer,
like prayer candles, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Totally, but it's also just like sweet, you know, yeah,
it's nice cake. It's also possible this is a backwards
adaptation from the Wassale cake, which is like a Christmas thing.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Oh okay, yeah, But.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Then there's like other things that are like no, this
is older, like nah, this is older, and like whatever.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Who gives a shit?

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Yeah, and it's as it's fuzzy because there's too much
written about it instead of fuzzy because there's not enough
written about it. Then you get the Jack o Lantern,
the most common origin story that you hear, the version
I heard on all the podcasts I listened to, which
is a good origin too. And it's not a wrong. Well,
they're all wrong, it's all myths. Who gives a shit?
One of the origin stories is a guy named Stingy

(52:20):
Jack who is clearly irish and he tries to trick
the devil. He does. He tricks the devil a couple times,
and as a result, he's like left to wander the
world and he's denied heaven and hell alike, and he
lights his way with his lantern. These are carved first
from turn ups and then they get carved from pumpkins
in the US. And this is a decent story, and

(52:41):
there's like other versions of it where like, actually he's
just like kind of shitty his whole life, and then
he shows up to heaven and Heaven's like the fuck
out of here. You don't belong here. And this story
and the way we talk about jack of lanterns is
this physical object goes back to about the eighteen thirties,
or we have evidence them to from the eighteen thirties,

(53:01):
where people have jack o' lantern contests at like the bar,
and it's sometimes called the Jack McLantern. It was also
called Hobbane's lantern from hobb and his Lantern. Really yeah,
I like that one. That's great. The older concept than
this that possibly also gives its name is it's related

(53:23):
to the will, the will of the wisp. Have you
heard of the will of the Wisp.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Yeah, but I can't remember in what context I would
have heard it.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
So the will of the Wisp is the like folklore
of when you're walking by or in a bog you
see fairy lights and you follow them and they lead
you to your death. And all over the world people
have versions of this where you because people see weird
fucking shit at night, right, and so these are the

(53:50):
they mislay travelers. They draw them into the swamps and
they're always just out of reach. And will of the
Wisp comes from Will, the name of a guy, right, Will,
and then his and then his torch. A wisp is
a word for a shitty torch made out of like
bundled sticks and paper.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
Not to go all will logic, but that feels like
so on the nose. That like when I finally saw
good Will Hunting and then I found out the character's
name was Will Hunting. What the fuck? It's just a
guy Will Monjack same ye that pissed me off.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Also, didn't they let you get away with that? In Massachusetts?

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Will of the Wisp? Don't we do not? I mean no,
we actually do claim gooble. But the point is that's
it was just a guy named Will. That makes it
way less romantic but also much funnier.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
I know, and so Also other words for the same
thing was Jack of the Lantern or hob and his lantern.
That's the Jack o lantern, and I still.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Like it Jack and Will, just like hob and Hobb. Okay,
I don't know a Hobb, but like I, I one
could argue that names of two of my bosses are
jacking Will. So this is like shocking to hear?

Speaker 2 (55:11):
Well, have they ever led you astray into a swamp?
My exact thought.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
I can't say that on on Mike, Do we know
a hobb Besides no, I can only say Miranda Hobbs
from Seximicity, Miranda Hobbs or Hobbs and Shaw. Those are
Calvin and Calvin and Hobbs.

Speaker 4 (55:34):
Yeah, huh, I guess guess guess somebody is gonna need
to hire a hobb Jamie.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
It's a name that people should bring back, Hobbiny. I
like it. It's named Hobby anymore.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
M hm where all my Hobbini's at?

Speaker 2 (55:49):
We're full up on Clayton's. Yeah, for sure, it's fine.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
The guy who murders cartoon lions and Tarizan. I don't
know why that just popped into my head, but it's true,
right anyways.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Okay, so, speaking of not really murder but mischief, Mischief
Night reached a fevered pitch during the Great Depression nineteen
thirty three was referred to as Black Halloween, and to
quote Ill will again quote youth gangs from this period
ripped down street signs, sawed down telephone poles, opened fire hydrants,

(56:26):
disabled street lights, barricaded streets with stolen gates and refuse,
dragged tree stumps onto railroad tracks, overturned cars, removed manhole covers,
tore up the boards of wooden sidewalks, smashed storefront windows,
held shopkeepers hostage, dropped fireworks into mailboxes, unhooked poles from
the tops of street cars, spread grease over trolley car tracks,

(56:47):
put empty barrels over church steeples, attacked the police, and
burned almost anything they could set a fire.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
Okay, honey, Okay, no, no, it's great.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
By in nineteen forty five, after World War Two, it
starts cutting down. But in nineteen or that starts whatever.
We'll get to it. But in nineteen forty five, after
thirteen Halloween, rioters were arrested in Toronto, seven thousand boys
and girls tried to storm the police station to free
their friends.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
Cool.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
They were turned away with tear gas and water cannons.
But yeah, like.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Sure, not surprised to hear that, but very fucking cool.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Yeah, and an overall my heart is with this particular thing.
But most Mischief Night mobs were misogynists, and many of
them were racist. And chaos for chaos's sake has some
interesting beauty but is not specifically endorsable. It's how I feel.
But whenever I hear about seven thousand boys and girls
trying to storm the police station to free their friends,

(57:48):
I'm on there.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
So it just fills your heart. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Yeah. And it was this spirit of chaos that brought
in the Halloween reformers, who were like, Halloween needs to
become wholesome. Starting in about nineteen forty five, trying to
redirect all that energy trick or treating was a specific
development of how to redirect the youth into like basically consumerism.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Yeah, And they like wrote about it at the time.
They were like, I don't have I didn't include the quotes,
but there's like in the Journal of Parenting or whatever.
They'd be like, we're doing.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
This thing redirect to your children's political outrage, and yeah,
pensiont for anti establishment chaos into little treats. Why not both?
And why not both?

Speaker 2 (58:39):
That's exactly exactly how I feel. And it was also
post World War Two that candy companies so there's no
more sugar rationing after World War Two ends, the nineteen
forty five candy companies are like, fuck, yeah, let's just
fuck those kids up. Let's just fuck their bodies with
fuck tons of sugar.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
The timing is like, yeah, the timing is fucked. Yeah.
It feels like absolutely perfect timing to be like, oh,
let's actually do a hard, hard right to consumerism. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
And so for like twenty years you get the like
sort of golden era of like Halloween as is pictured
in the classic Americana right right, But now the Halloween's
a little bit tamed and like as generations go by,
they no longer know why they say trick or treat
versus like just give me a treat, you know, right?
That was this tame Halloween was far too much. Starting

(59:34):
in the late sixties, you get the demonization of Halloween.
It's nineteen sixty seven, you get the first rumors of
razor blades in the apples. Yeah, and the wasp suburbanites
went to war against the Christian holiday that has very
minimal roots in paganism, no more than like Christmas, that

(59:55):
was developed specifically to keep kids acting right.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
It's almost like they're fucking dumb asses, is it. It's
almost like they're just losers with a lot of time
on their hands, isn't it. Yeah, just like get you know,
get whip up a froth, getting pissed off about fucking
whatever God. That is really satisfying to hear. Honestly, Yeah, they.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
Just I love that. They're just wrong. They're like, there's
pagan holiday, like you're like barely. It is absolutely all
of the recognizable elements that we are aware of were
developed since Christianity.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
And like, imagine a story about Christianity that ends with
the call coming from inside the house. Why couldn't imagine
this being the case?

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
I know?

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Wow, Wow, terrific. Well done everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
There's one more real brief flare up of Halloween's spirit
in ways that are both interesting and also largely bad.
Devil's Night, Okay, In nineteen eighty three, you get Devil's Night,
which started I think in Detroit. I wrote Chicago in
the script, but I think I was because I was
thinking that the crow takes place in Chicago. I don't

(01:01:06):
know where the crow takes place, but in my head
at Chicago. But anyway, Detroit Devil's Night. You have this
city that is like fucking abandoned by white flight, and
it's just like a fucking hard place to live, and
so people are like, what if we just burn shit
down on Halloween? Ween, So on October thirtieth, nineteen eighty four,
there are two hundred and ninety seven arsons in Detroit.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
Some of them are angry kids in a dying town.
Some of them are insurance fraud some of them are
land grabs. Like this is why it's like hard to
not just be like fuck, yeah, fuck it, burn it
all down, is it?

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Like right?

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Sometimes the people who want to burn things down are
like actually doing it for really evil reasons. Yeah, But
you could also say that bonfires are an essential part
of Halloween and that communities come together to stare into
the flames to keep evil at bay.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Many things can be true at once, Yeah, and we
have not the time to get into how the Satanic
panic layers on with this.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
I thought about it and I.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Was like an other day, Yeah, so many potential tangents. Wow,
oh god, I just the Christian self phone is really unparalleled, unparalleled.
I feel like this is like maybe the third episode
I've heard that ends in a Christian cell phone. Well,
this is when I wasn't aware of and I uh,

(01:02:29):
I love it. I love I mean, I feel a
little more personally connected to Halloween in the way I
wasn't expecting to. And also my uncle wasn't totally wrong
because this does seem to be like a commercialized amalgamation
of five different things sort of kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Yeah yeah, And I mean, you know, what is any
attempt at like finding some path to understanding and divine
besides like figuring some shit out. Sorry, I got distracted
because Anderson was just displayed to us on thenranging.

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
And like, well she woke up and was like, oh shit,
eighty Jamie, what do you doing?

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
He but yeah, thanks for coming to my Halloween spooky times.
And yeah, no, I actually felt a similar like because
at first I was like I wanted the easy through line,
I wanted the like aha, and then instead I'm like
it's what we make of it. Like the labels don't
really matter, the like spirit of spooky Times is what matters,

(01:03:28):
and we can all embody that in whatever ways we want.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
That puts me at peace.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Everything is permitted except certain things.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
And so when I'm wearing my thirteen going on thirty
costume tonight, I can rest assured that I'm taking place.
I'm taking part in a bastardized version of something really beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Yeah, exactly, but it's it's bastards all the way down
in a in a nice way, you do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Yeah, oh, thank you, Margaret. That was so cool.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
Yeah, I think the plug here at the end.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
Oh yeah, I think. Just listen to Ghost Church. I
think that's the closest project I've done that feels very
much a cousin, not a not a larva cousin, but
also you know, a bit of a larva cousin to
the Limeria that was this, that was this series. Yeah. Uh,
listen to Ghost Church. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter
if you so choose, and buy my book about hot

(01:04:25):
dogs and have have a you know, I have a
good This comes out on All Saints Day. Yeah, have
dinner and talk to your dad, have a nice time,
easy mac and talk to your grandma.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Oh yeah, I'm going to make I'm making a mac
and cheese to night. Now I've just suddenly decided I'm
always really hungry at the end of these recordings. That's
not what anyone needs to know. What instead people need
to know is you can follow me on the internet
by going into whatever social thing and typing in my name,
and that is how you'll find me and get the

(01:05:00):
book about hot dogs. Message Jamie incessantly about hot dogs.
The cool thing about doing something like that is that
people really like when you only talk to them about
the one thing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
And surely you're the first to send it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Yeah, it's like making fun of people's names, Like whenever
you make jokes about people's names, you're always the first
person to say it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Yeah, oh, did you know that my name lines up
with the colloquial j lo Because no one's ever fucking
told me that before.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
You know what, I'm the one person who never would
have told you that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
Because I know. And that's why her bond is so powerful.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
So for you guysing to plug at.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
All right, see y'all next week.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Bye bye, cool people.

Speaker 4 (01:05:47):
Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
Of b.