August 20, 2009 • 30 mins
H.P. Lovecraft's strange, elaborate stories and mythologies have inspired a devoted following. Join Josh and Chuck -- and a special guest -- as they discuss Lovecraft's most famous creation, the "Necronomicon," in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. We just ticked off every
(00:21):
HP Lovecraft fan there is with that. That was so cheesy. Um,
this is stuff you should know. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles W. Bryant, and who else is in here? I
was gonna wait a minute, Okay, I was going to
lead up to that, Well, there's no one else in here, no,
no one. Um. Today we are doing a special podcast
(00:42):
on Yeah, um and uh. For those of you who
don't know what the necronomicon is, it is arguably the
most famous fictional text ever created in the history of
American literature. It is an evil book, one might say,
(01:02):
created by are probably my favorite author, HP Lovecraft. Yeah.
I didn't realize this. You told me this, I didn't.
I love Lovecraft. My favorite UM stories are Dreams in
the Witch House, where he basically equates um physics to Witchcraft,
like witches have a really an advanced grasp on physics.
It's awesome, it's so cool. Strange case of Charles Dexter
(01:26):
Award is probably the greatest one he's ever written. It's amazing.
Uh yeah, you gotta read that. And these are short stories. Well,
the next one's a novella at the Mountains of Madness.
Excellent story. And actually that one kind of factors into
what we're gonna be talking about today. Um, I don't
know if the Necronomicon makes an appearance, but what the
Necronomicon deals with is all over the place there. So Chuck,
(01:51):
let's despite my love of love Craft. Yes, it's painfully
obvious to both of us that we're mere full these
compared to some other people out there who are Lovecraft fans,
right the dogs. And we figured that we were going
to get nothing but angry emails for this one, and
they take it pretty seriously. I would imagine that they
(02:11):
don't want us to poop on their hero and their
icons now, and he's my hero too, but I just
I don't. I can do it justice, you know I can't.
So instead we decided to bring in who will call
the shield, who can who can take all of the
angry emails, and that is our friend, colleague and fellow podcaster,
Jonathan Strickland. Paramore. Yes, we have a special guest today.
(02:32):
Chuck wasn't lying. I was so, hey, strick how's it going?
Hey there, guys, um going pretty well. Thanks for having
me on. I I really enjoyed writing both Culhu and
the Necronomicon articles, so I'm there as very very cool.
You're you're kind of raised on these, weren't you. Doesn't
your dad write weird fiction? Yeah? Um, my father's names
(02:53):
Brad Strickland, So if you were to do a search
for that on Amazon, you would see that he's written
quite a few novels, several which fall into the horror
or weird fiction category. So yeah, I grew up around
the stuff. This was your life. It's pretty cool, and
you're you're dead, predicted Teddy Ruxman. That's true, but has
nothing to do with Lovecraft or Cathul or into the
(03:14):
necronomic right, No, it doesn't. My parents are t school teachers,
so not nearly excited it. As a mechanical engineer, I
didn't grow up with Cathulhu and strange beasts that would
drag him in saying just to look upon its face, right, yeah, yeahs,
which is something. It's a point that you make in
the in the articles you wrote, strict was that these
these creatures that the Necronomicon deals with, um, they'll drive
(03:37):
you crazy just by looking at them or by you know,
interacting with them. Usually terrible, terrible things happen. Right, And
at the center of the Necronomicon is cathulu cthulu or
there's a pronunciation um that Lovecraft wrote in a letter
to a fellow author. Right, and how how is that
one pronounced? You know, why are you hitting me with
(03:58):
that all all of a sudden. Okay, let's let's let's
be clear here. Lovecraft actually makes a point to say
that these otherworldly creatures have their own language which humans
are incapable of repeating. That makes it very mysterious and
creepy to me. Yeah, it's the same sort of nature
as as they. They have this appearance that we are
we cannot comprehend. If we were to look upon it
(04:20):
as you say, we would go crazy. So it actually
takes a lot of pressure off because you can name
things whatever you like. You can put as many consonants
and little apostrophes in there, and so you can call
it whatever you like. And when people say, how do
you pronounce it? You just respond you can't. But Coutulu
is one that I think most Lovecraft um scholars would
(04:42):
argue as the appropriate pronunciation. But the way I've always
said it, in the way that most of the fans
that I've talked to have always said it as Cathulu,
right was it wasn't there a rumor early on that
the clover filled movie was the monster was the Yeah,
that was very early on when that that preview first hit,
and there was not even a title for the movie yet.
(05:03):
In fact, there was no title internally for the movie.
People could only get little glimpses of what was going on,
and a lot of people said, Hey, maybe this is
the Cathulu movie we've all been waiting for. This is
actually the monster. I wonder I haven't made that yet.
I think, Well, there have been several movies that have
tried to tap into the Lovecraft universe, and only a
few have been really successful. I think part of the
(05:26):
problem is that how do you portray a monster that
is so horrible that you'd go crazy looking? That was
what I was thinking was, it's probably pretty intimidating for
a filmmaker to try and tackle this. Well, there there
are descriptions of Cthulhu. What's right? So he basically he
has wings. Um, he resembles just by looking at this. Yeah,
(05:46):
you think about this, do you think do you think
feminine when you hear this? Wings? Huge leathery wings, part octopus,
part dragon woman, part part man. Now I wouldn't say,
I just seem so with Lovecraft thing he would say
it is agenda that cannot be defined. Yeah, unnamable. Okay,
so we'll call him he. Okay, so we will call
(06:08):
Cthulu he Okay, So um, Cthulhu in the whole reason
we're talking about him is the he figures at the
center of the Cthulhu mythos that that Lovecraft created during
the course of his writing in Strickland. When was he
most prolific, It was it during the twenties. Yeah, we're
talking about just right around that era, late twenties. Um,
(06:32):
pretty much. What what's really interesting to me is that
Cthulhu became the central of this the center figure of
this mythos. But it's not the creature that Lovecraft wrote
about the most. Cathula really only factors into a couple
of stories, and in fact is described in some as
being a priest kind of figure for the Old Ones,
(06:54):
which is this race of creatures Lovecraft created. Yeah, but
he never said whether he was a priest that led
the worship of the Old Ones or whether he was
the priest to the Old Ones. That's that's correct. So
that's you know, I'm just gonna leave the rim. You
guys are nerd and out all. Well, the point I'm
trying to make here is that it's really the fans
(07:15):
of Lovecraft who kind of latched onto Cathulu and made
it the central figure of his mythology. Uh, if you
were to read all the stories, you would say why.
I mean, it is a very striking kind of image,
but why this over any other particular like why not?
A reason that I think it's mainly because when you
do read the descriptions, Uh, they are very compelling, and
(07:39):
I think that I think it's also probably one of
the ones that are that's easier to imagine than some
of the other A lot of the other ones end
up being shapeless. Well that's kind of hard to imagine
or mindless um being cosmic being who ruled at the
center of chaos, that's kind of difficult to um to
conceive of. I think so it's it's very hard to
(08:01):
make a plush toy of that, right. I think the
other reason that Cathulum has become such a prominent figure
in love crafty and lore is that he's still here
on Earth. He was, um, he was one of the
rulers of Earth along with the great old Ones, right,
that's correct. And then he had a city that was
(08:22):
called really a actually still is that sunk under the waters.
And what's interesting is that depending on which story you're reading,
you can kind of locate where really is. It's off
the coast of South America, and uh, there have been
some interesting, weird things that have gone on in in
that general area that people jokingly attribute to Cathulhu, uh, saying, hey,
(08:47):
you know it's Cathulu snoring, right, Like I know you
put a little sidebar that was pretty interesting that they
detected with underwater microphones what a very loud, low rip
eating sound somewhere out in the middle of the ocean
out there, right, and that they said, oh, well, that's
just a whale song. But then marine biologists came in
(09:07):
and say, oh, that's not a whale, and that's unless
that's the biggest whale in the history of the universe. Right,
it was such a loud and prolonged sound that it
would be it would have to be made by a
creature larger than anything that we currently know of, right, So, hey, Cathula,
it's got to be him. It's interesting if you listen
to the sound unaltered, it's just this really low rumble
(09:29):
and it goes on for ages. But if you speed
it up really fast, it goes really which is why
they call it the bloop. There you have it, which
is also why a lot of people thought the clover
Field Monster was Cathulu because apparently on the on the
official website, there was a bloop, was there? Yeah, they
tied it into a a fictional um slushy maker Japanese company,
(09:54):
and so that had something to do with it as well.
Once people started seeing the supplemental material, they started draw
their own conclusions, and of course they turned out to
be wrong. But it just shows how imaginative and passionate
the Lovecraft failure, and it shows how smart J. J.
Abrams is, the marketing genius, master marketer. So let's talk
a little bit more about the sure um. So the
(10:22):
text Strickland is often considered a book of spells. Most
of the people who get their hands on the Necronomicon
in lovecraft stories um end up using it to conjure
some of the Great Old Ones. Remember Cathulus, the priests
of the Great Old Ones. Um, and terrible, terrible things
happened this guy's open up. People tend to disappear in
(10:46):
in under terrible circumstances. And um the author. Let's talk
about the author of the Necronomicon. He himself, the mad
arab abdul al has read. That's correct, the mad arab
abdul l has read A fiend. Yes, the eighth century
Opium fiend from supposed to be supposedly a poet who
(11:07):
at some point gets this um. Well, I suppose he
gets some strange inspiration, possibly fueled by drugs, and writes
down this book called the Necronomicon, right, originally called al right,
and that that refers to a sound made by night
insects in the desert or demons howling, depending on who
(11:30):
you ask. Right, that's correct. And so we have this
this text that's supposed to be very rambling and crazy,
and uh. Interesting thing is that Lovecraft never wrote the
full Necronomicon. He actually wanted to create it, and and
dabbled on a shorter versions at one point, right, right,
he wrote a couple of passages from an abridged version,
(11:51):
and there are there are a few passages that are
that are fairly famous in lovecraft lore. But he wanted
to create this mythology where scholars in his world would
have certain books they would refer to whenever they needed
to study these creatures. Okay, and some of those books
actually were real, right, that's correct. Some of the books
were in fact real books that have a historical background.
(12:15):
Most of them were just figments of his imagination. He
created the Lovecrafts, I should say, a Lovecraft's imagination, not
the mad Arab. No, not the mad Arab. So yeah,
it's interesting. You're talking about an author Lovecraft who creates
this fictional author, the mad Arab, who in turn creates
a fictional book called the Necronomicon, parts of which Lovecraft
(12:38):
actually wrote outright, So that is the that is the
spoiler for those of you who weren't familiar with this
at all. Necronomicon completely fictional, mad Arab, completely fictional. And actually,
what's cool about um Strickland in the in the article
you make the point that the uh, the Necronomicon has
not only survived lovecraft death, it's thrived. You can find
(13:00):
um versions of it on Amazon. Um there's actual cults,
whether they realized that the Necronomic con or except that
the Necronomicon is fictitious, they still um this this philosophy
of the necronomic and still figures very much into their outlook.
Then there's other maybe I got the impression slightly nutt
(13:22):
of your cults that actually don't believe the Necronomicon. It
is fictional, right, but it's it's pervaded into reality. Correct. Yeah,
all of that is right. The uh it's it is
fascinating because since Lovecraft left such huge gaps with the Necronomicon,
you know, he only wrote little bits and pieces, it's
allowed other people to swoop in and fill in those
(13:43):
gaps and make money and make money. Yeah, I'll never forget.
I was in a bookstore. Um, I was in uh,
I think it was South Carolina. I was in a bookstore.
This is when I was a teenager, and I'm looking
through the books. I'm just trying to find something to read,
and I come across a copy of the Neck Anomicon,
and I had to stop and look again because I thought,
wait a minute, what why would I find a fictional
(14:07):
book in a bookstore? And so I took it down
and started reading it, and it was filled with lots
of of tortured kind of prose. No, it was terrible.
Did bite your hand when you try to grab it?
It did not? Reference will come back to that later. No, No,
it was. It was a terrible book. It was a
terrible attempt at trying to make a book sound really
(14:30):
dangerous and spooky. But it was transparent. I mean, it
was obvious that it was someone trying to be funny.
All Right, you guys, this reality parts boring. Let's go
back into the fictional world of Lovecraft in the Necronomicon. Okay,
where are we actually We're no, we're in no particular place.
We're just in this version of reality that Lovecraft created.
(14:51):
How about that? Oy? Alright, So within this world you
have various creatures, you have various books that all of
all of which are bad. I mean, that's just there
are people who think they can take advantage of them
and gain either power or knowledge or some combination thereof.
But it always turns out badly for them. In fact,
you kind of wonder why people keep bothering. Yeah, that's
(15:13):
really I mean, that's really what weird fiction is all about.
You're talking. When you use the word weird, you don't
just mean unusual, you mean incomprehensible to the human mind. Yeah.
I think Josh told me off Mike that. A lot
of other authors kind of have said that's a bit
of a cop out on lovecraft part because a lot
of times he doesn't have to end up being real
creative with his descriptions of things, and he can just say, well,
(15:37):
trust me, look upon it, and you shall go and
see or or unnamable. Yeah, and and I think it's brilliant.
But yeah, there's definitely an argument on either side. You
could argue that, well, the human imagination is so powerful
that if you leave it up to the individual reader,
it's that person is going to make his or her
own most horrifying creature. And there's nothing that you, as
(15:59):
the writer could describe because you don't know that person.
I don't know what would horrify that person exactly. But
by leaving it up to the to the reader's imagination, Uh,
suddenly you've made a much more effective monster, which is
kind of what they did with clover Field. Actually, they
did kind of tap into that because they didn't show
the monster very much at all, and I thought it
was effective. I like the movie. No, I I really
enjoyed that as well. I haven't seen it yet both
(16:20):
of you showed up. Oh sorry, spoiler alert, there's a monster.
Another thing I thought was cool was that Lovecraft at
one point said that there are um only a uh
several official copies of the Necronomicon located in I think
you listed five different libraries, and uh, two of them
don't even exist. So he he dabbled. Yes, he dabbled
(16:44):
so much between reality and fiction that I think it worked.
It ended up being like, you don't know what's real
and what isn't. Dude, we're back in Lovecraft's world. Okay, sorry,
so strickling. The Necronomicon was written by al has red Right,
and um he I believe he died fairly horribly. Either
he was swallowed up after conjuring somebody using the Necronomicon.
(17:08):
I think I remember another story where Lovecraft writes about
how he was beheaded but his head was still able
to speak. Um, there there's several different ways that he
supposedly died, but either way he died, but his book
survived and it stayed in Arabic, which actually I believe
none of the Arabic original copies in Arabic exist today.
(17:29):
But the UM in nine fifties, somebody else found it
and it was translated into Greek. Right, Yes, that's right.
There are actually several different translations UM that are mentioned
in Lovecraft's stories. Uh, there's Greek, there's there's Hebrew, there's
a few others. There's Latin. I think he said Alias
Wormings was a priest that translated into Latin, and then
(17:50):
it was banned by Pope Gregory nine. But in reality,
this is what I love the fiction. Again, you're not Catholic?
Was that not Pope Gregory nine? The nine? Okay, yeah,
but Gregory the Night? Uh? In reality that Elias Warmius
was actually a Dutch physician, so there was no tide
there whatsoever. Yeah, that was the mixture of reality and fantasy. Um. Now,
(18:12):
the the really cool stuff, as far as I'm concerned
here is that that he's he's built up a believable
enough base that if you were to just read the
story without without any other background information, you could totally
buy into this mythology. He's really made it very rich
and believable. He's he's he's anchored it in reality and um.
(18:35):
And there are lovecraft Ian scholars and fans who will
talk of this as if it were all real, as
if these Greek and and other translations of the Necronomicon
do in fact exist and are in fact in these libraries. Right. Well,
I know what earlier we were talking and I thought
it was odd that he would use people like Elias
warmis their name, which you know was a physician, and
(18:57):
then in six Dr John D was an Englishman and
a magician, when in fact he was really just an
adviser to Queen Elizabeth. And I thought, well, how strange
to use these real people like wouldn't he be found out?
But you said that, you know, this is the nine twenties,
and there weren't You couldn't go up on the internet
and look up who John D was, right, And now
you had people who those names would sound familiar, and
(19:18):
they think, hey, that does lead leads some credence to
this and I and I also compared it to Bram Stoker,
who did base Dracula off of the real person Vlad Tepish.
But if you were to look into Vlad tepish Is life,
you would see that it doesn't really parallel Dracula at all.
You could just see where the inspiration came from. But
because you have laud Dre Cool, you have this whole
(19:40):
persona there, it lends your story a stronger base in reality. Yeah,
like you guys said, the Lovecraft is a master at
mixing reality and fiction, like with the libraries where you
could supposedly find the Necronomicon, but also he would pepper
um some of the books like on the shelves ire
were in the strange case of Charles dexter Ward his
(20:03):
ancestor what was his ancestors name, I don't remember either, um,
but he there was there were tons of books of
magic and the occult, and some of them were real,
like the Rs Magna at Ultima uh, and they would
be sitting alongside the Necronomicon. So there were some that
were real and some that weren't. Um. And not only
(20:23):
did Lovecraft write about that, he would use books that
some of his contemporaries had made upright in his books,
and they would do just the same, right, they would
mention the Necronomicon in their books. Yeah, there was a
lot of cross pollination going on at this time, where
you would. Lovecraft loved having friends who were also authors.
(20:44):
He was prolific letter writer, and he encouraged his friends
to write stories set in his mythology, and then he
would write stories there's as well. So you started to
get this really rich background that didn't exist in other
authors works. Because I mean, in a way, it's almost
like writing fan fiction, except in this case, the people
(21:04):
who are writing fan fiction are really well known authors, right, right,
But that continues today. You still have people writing within
Lovecraft's mythology, and of course, you know, it's expanded beyond
just writing books. It's also in movies and television. Right.
There's some pretty pretty noteworthy cameos that the Necronomicon has made,
(21:25):
most notably in the Evil Dead series. Yes that was
it an Evil Dead or just Evil Dead too, No,
it's in It's an Evil Dead, Evil Dead to an
Army of Darkness. Army of Darkness actually was my favorite
scene with the Necronomicon because he has to approach it
on the hill and repeat the Klatu varata and then
which the last word isn't that from the day the
(21:48):
Earth still? Yeah, that's actually that was the one of
the things about Yes, Sam Raimi just loves to quote
from other movies and and and science fiction, horror everything.
I mean, he's he's one of those guys who just
has like that huge Labrintheian Library of of Trivia instead
and so yeah, he brought a lot of that out
into those movies. But the interesting thing about the Necronomicon
(22:09):
and those and those movies is that it doesn't really
resemble the one in Lovecraft stories. Right. It's the Book
of the Dead is what they call it, and evil
dead and it's a or at least an army of darkness.
It was like this, uh had an evil face. It
was like leather bound, but had a mouth and eyes,
and that's why it bit him when he tried to
pick it up, which is what I was referencing right right.
It's actually bound in flesh and written in blood. Yeah, yeah,
(22:32):
and it's uh, it's a little different from the Necronomicon
and Lovecraft stories. But the Necronomicon, you gotta admit, that's
an awesome name for an evil book. So it totally
made sense to to reference it, you know, and a
lot of people I think have sort of a passing
familiarity with Lovecraft stories stuff, so if you mentioned it,
(22:53):
they get the idea, oh, that's an evil book. They
don't need to have this wealth of information in their heads.
So my favorite reference, um, and you actually pointed out
in the article Strick is um the appearance of the
Necronomicon in the Simpsons. You guys see this one. It
was in the episode Brawl in the Family where there's
a meeting of the Republican Party and Mr Burns goes
(23:17):
and now Bob Dole will read from the Necronomicon. And
Bob Dole comes to the podium and he's wearing like
a black robe and he starts channing in Latin and
reading from the book. It's perfect. Yeah, My I think
my favorite is when it makes a very very brief
appearance in Friday of the Thirteenth, Part nine, Jason goes
to Hell. It's it's just it's one of those things
where the camera's just panning by and if you pay attention,
(23:39):
you see, hey, that's the Necronomicon from the Evil Dead movies. Yeah,
it's just it's just there in in the shot. I mean,
there's no reference to it. No one picks it up.
Where was it? Was it like Jason's house, Yeah, it's
it's towards the it's towards the end of the movie.
There's a few different references. I think you also, if
you look, you see a crate that's labeled Arctic Expedition,
So fans of horror movies, you'll know what that's from. Too,
(24:01):
so awesome. Jason goes to Hell? Was that was that?
That was also in Pumpkinhead two? Yep. Also in Aquitine
Hunger Force, which we love, and The Real Ghostbusters, The
Grim Adventures of Billion Mandy and metal Lock. You don't
know that that's that's the that's the cartoon on Adult
(24:24):
Swim that details the misadventures of a death metal band
called death Clock. You almost said adventures, very nice catch.
Misadventures much different. So this was actually in strict Thank
you so much for coming in, dude, you say this,
this is one of those every once in a while
we'll do a podcast where like this is just the
tip of the iceberg. Go read the article. You clearly
(24:47):
should go read these articles. If we piqued your interest
in all. First of all, go start reading Lovecraft. He's awesome. Um.
He was also an awesome person his real life. He
he had a woman that he lived with who was
old enough to be his mother, that he love up
very much. But people posit that they never consummated their relationship.
Is that correct? Yep. He was just an all around
(25:07):
weird guy, but really sweet and cute and um not
really well I think he does in that nine He
doesn't have like uh, yeah, you're right, um, but he
he was an interesting character, uh, an incredible writer and
uh Strickland wrote two really good articles on him. So
if you want to read more about it, you can
(25:28):
go to how stuff works dot com and typing cthulu
c t h U l U in the search bar.
You could also type in necronomicon, which would be spelled
n E c R O n O M I c
O and necronomicon you can find both of those articles.
(25:48):
And I think if you type you those words in
the Google in general, you're going to find a whole
world away to you. Just interesting stuff. Interesting way to
waste some time. You dare not speak it and look
at it or you shall go insane. And also we
can all look forward to the day the stars aligne
and the Stone City of Relay rises up out of
(26:09):
the ocean and takes possession of the Earth again, and
we are all screwed awesome, or as we would say
in love Crafts universe, Yeah yeah, kutula fatagan. No better
way to end then for that, no better way to
end the than that? All right, Well, since Strickling just
said something that we can't pronounce ourselves, that means it's
listener mail time. Alright, So Chuck, what do you have
(26:35):
for us today? You're just gonna call this the saddest
thing I've ever heard. This is from Vic in Lincolnshire, Illinois.
It's a little lengthy. If I'm gonna I'm gonna read
it fast. Vic is a listener who has borrowed his
daughter's iPod and definitely he said, I was kind of
taking it over. That is the saddest thing I've ever
uh And he he This came about as a suggestion
(26:57):
that we do something on wrongful death lassy bots or
just wrongful death period. I don't Back in nine seventy
my dad had a heart attack and was hospitalized in
the co ordinary care unit. They had trouble stabilizing his
heart rhythm and decided to implant a temporary demand pacemaker.
I guess in theory, when his heart needed and assist,
(27:17):
the pacemaker would kick in and get things back on track.
We went to visit him the next morning. We could
tell that everything was kind of crazy in the CCU,
people in a frenzy, all kinds of activity, and we
stood beside my father talking to him. I was sixteen
years old, and I was fascinated with the ocloscope on
the shelf above his head, routinely drawing a regular paced heartbeat,
(27:38):
now familiar from all the medical shows in the last
forty years. Okay, the nurse on duty saw us at
dad's bed and quickly came over to clean him up
for the visitors, comb his hair shave him. She was
running late and hurriedly plugged his electric shaver into the outlet,
the same outlet as the temporary pacemaker power supply. Almost immediately,
(27:59):
the heartbeat trade went wild on the monitor. I had
my eyes on it the whole time. It first confused
as to whether I was seeing electronic interference or actual
interference with the beating of my dad's heart. It quickly
became clear that it was a ladder. My dad yelled,
almost leaping out of bed and fell back dead. Oh
my god, right in front of his face. At sixteen
(28:19):
in the hospital because the nurse plugged this thing in.
Wow awful, no happy ending here. They tried in vain
to revive my father, aged fifty nine. A wrongful death
lawsuit ensued, but my mother became too sick to go
through with it. My understanding is that the pacemaker technology
is vastly improved over the years. I'm not sure if
there are other stories like mine. And here's a little
interesting side note. At the end uh in the CCU
(28:43):
at sixteen, I noticed four little shelves about seven feet
off the ground in the corners of the room. I
asked the resident past or what they were there for.
He informed me that someone was doing an experiment with
near death out of body experiences because of the high
quote traffic in that room. Apparently there were cards with
little shape on them, one on top of the on
top of the shelves. Have my dad been revived, they
(29:04):
would have asked him if he were called hovering above
his bed and did he look down and see those shapes? Weird?
So that is a side note, and Vic, it's a
hell of a side note. This is a long time ago,
and I wrote you back and said I was very
sorry to hear about this, but it was a great story.
And thanks for sharing. And we will definitely add wrongful
death lawsuits to the suggestion box for sure. And thanks
(29:27):
for sharing that interesting and awful story. If you have
any interesting or awful stories, or you just want to
say hi, or what up? Or what what does it mentioned? Unicorns?
Maybe sure you can put in an email and send
that to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com
(29:49):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page. Yeah, brought to you by the reinvented
two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. We just ticked off every
(00:21):
HP Lovecraft fan there is with that. That was so cheesy. Um,
this is stuff you should know. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles W. Bryant, and who else is in here? I
was gonna wait a minute, Okay, I was going to
lead up to that, Well, there's no one else in here, no,
no one. Um. Today we are doing a special podcast
(00:42):
on Yeah, um and uh. For those of you who
don't know what the necronomicon is, it is arguably the
most famous fictional text ever created in the history of
American literature. It is an evil book, one might say,
(01:02):
created by are probably my favorite author, HP Lovecraft. Yeah.
I didn't realize this. You told me this, I didn't.
I love Lovecraft. My favorite UM stories are Dreams in
the Witch House, where he basically equates um physics to Witchcraft,
like witches have a really an advanced grasp on physics.
It's awesome, it's so cool. Strange case of Charles Dexter
(01:26):
Award is probably the greatest one he's ever written. It's amazing.
Uh yeah, you gotta read that. And these are short stories. Well,
the next one's a novella at the Mountains of Madness.
Excellent story. And actually that one kind of factors into
what we're gonna be talking about today. Um, I don't
know if the Necronomicon makes an appearance, but what the
Necronomicon deals with is all over the place there. So Chuck,
(01:51):
let's despite my love of love Craft. Yes, it's painfully
obvious to both of us that we're mere full these
compared to some other people out there who are Lovecraft fans,
right the dogs. And we figured that we were going
to get nothing but angry emails for this one, and
they take it pretty seriously. I would imagine that they
(02:11):
don't want us to poop on their hero and their
icons now, and he's my hero too, but I just
I don't. I can do it justice, you know I can't.
So instead we decided to bring in who will call
the shield, who can who can take all of the
angry emails, and that is our friend, colleague and fellow podcaster,
Jonathan Strickland. Paramore. Yes, we have a special guest today.
(02:32):
Chuck wasn't lying. I was so, hey, strick how's it going?
Hey there, guys, um going pretty well. Thanks for having
me on. I I really enjoyed writing both Culhu and
the Necronomicon articles, so I'm there as very very cool.
You're you're kind of raised on these, weren't you. Doesn't
your dad write weird fiction? Yeah? Um, my father's names
(02:53):
Brad Strickland, So if you were to do a search
for that on Amazon, you would see that he's written
quite a few novels, several which fall into the horror
or weird fiction category. So yeah, I grew up around
the stuff. This was your life. It's pretty cool, and
you're you're dead, predicted Teddy Ruxman. That's true, but has
nothing to do with Lovecraft or Cathul or into the
(03:14):
necronomic right, No, it doesn't. My parents are t school teachers,
so not nearly excited it. As a mechanical engineer, I
didn't grow up with Cathulhu and strange beasts that would
drag him in saying just to look upon its face, right, yeah, yeahs,
which is something. It's a point that you make in
the in the articles you wrote, strict was that these
these creatures that the Necronomicon deals with, um, they'll drive
(03:37):
you crazy just by looking at them or by you know,
interacting with them. Usually terrible, terrible things happen. Right, And
at the center of the Necronomicon is cathulu cthulu or
there's a pronunciation um that Lovecraft wrote in a letter
to a fellow author. Right, and how how is that
one pronounced? You know, why are you hitting me with
(03:58):
that all all of a sudden. Okay, let's let's let's
be clear here. Lovecraft actually makes a point to say
that these otherworldly creatures have their own language which humans
are incapable of repeating. That makes it very mysterious and
creepy to me. Yeah, it's the same sort of nature
as as they. They have this appearance that we are
we cannot comprehend. If we were to look upon it
(04:20):
as you say, we would go crazy. So it actually
takes a lot of pressure off because you can name
things whatever you like. You can put as many consonants
and little apostrophes in there, and so you can call
it whatever you like. And when people say, how do
you pronounce it? You just respond you can't. But Coutulu
is one that I think most Lovecraft um scholars would
(04:42):
argue as the appropriate pronunciation. But the way I've always
said it, in the way that most of the fans
that I've talked to have always said it as Cathulu,
right was it wasn't there a rumor early on that
the clover filled movie was the monster was the Yeah,
that was very early on when that that preview first hit,
and there was not even a title for the movie yet.
(05:03):
In fact, there was no title internally for the movie.
People could only get little glimpses of what was going on,
and a lot of people said, Hey, maybe this is
the Cathulu movie we've all been waiting for. This is
actually the monster. I wonder I haven't made that yet.
I think, Well, there have been several movies that have
tried to tap into the Lovecraft universe, and only a
few have been really successful. I think part of the
(05:26):
problem is that how do you portray a monster that
is so horrible that you'd go crazy looking? That was
what I was thinking was, it's probably pretty intimidating for
a filmmaker to try and tackle this. Well, there there
are descriptions of Cthulhu. What's right? So he basically he
has wings. Um, he resembles just by looking at this. Yeah,
(05:46):
you think about this, do you think do you think
feminine when you hear this? Wings? Huge leathery wings, part octopus,
part dragon woman, part part man. Now I wouldn't say,
I just seem so with Lovecraft thing he would say
it is agenda that cannot be defined. Yeah, unnamable. Okay,
so we'll call him he. Okay, so we will call
(06:08):
Cthulu he Okay, So um, Cthulhu in the whole reason
we're talking about him is the he figures at the
center of the Cthulhu mythos that that Lovecraft created during
the course of his writing in Strickland. When was he
most prolific, It was it during the twenties. Yeah, we're
talking about just right around that era, late twenties. Um,
(06:32):
pretty much. What what's really interesting to me is that
Cthulhu became the central of this the center figure of
this mythos. But it's not the creature that Lovecraft wrote
about the most. Cathula really only factors into a couple
of stories, and in fact is described in some as
being a priest kind of figure for the Old Ones,
(06:54):
which is this race of creatures Lovecraft created. Yeah, but
he never said whether he was a priest that led
the worship of the Old Ones or whether he was
the priest to the Old Ones. That's that's correct. So
that's you know, I'm just gonna leave the rim. You
guys are nerd and out all. Well, the point I'm
trying to make here is that it's really the fans
(07:15):
of Lovecraft who kind of latched onto Cathulu and made
it the central figure of his mythology. Uh, if you
were to read all the stories, you would say why.
I mean, it is a very striking kind of image,
but why this over any other particular like why not?
A reason that I think it's mainly because when you
do read the descriptions, Uh, they are very compelling, and
(07:39):
I think that I think it's also probably one of
the ones that are that's easier to imagine than some
of the other A lot of the other ones end
up being shapeless. Well that's kind of hard to imagine
or mindless um being cosmic being who ruled at the
center of chaos, that's kind of difficult to um to
conceive of. I think so it's it's very hard to
(08:01):
make a plush toy of that, right. I think the
other reason that Cathulum has become such a prominent figure
in love crafty and lore is that he's still here
on Earth. He was, um, he was one of the
rulers of Earth along with the great old Ones, right,
that's correct. And then he had a city that was
(08:22):
called really a actually still is that sunk under the waters.
And what's interesting is that depending on which story you're reading,
you can kind of locate where really is. It's off
the coast of South America, and uh, there have been
some interesting, weird things that have gone on in in
that general area that people jokingly attribute to Cathulhu, uh, saying, hey,
(08:47):
you know it's Cathulu snoring, right, Like I know you
put a little sidebar that was pretty interesting that they
detected with underwater microphones what a very loud, low rip
eating sound somewhere out in the middle of the ocean
out there, right, and that they said, oh, well, that's
just a whale song. But then marine biologists came in
(09:07):
and say, oh, that's not a whale, and that's unless
that's the biggest whale in the history of the universe. Right,
it was such a loud and prolonged sound that it
would be it would have to be made by a
creature larger than anything that we currently know of, right, So, hey, Cathula,
it's got to be him. It's interesting if you listen
to the sound unaltered, it's just this really low rumble
(09:29):
and it goes on for ages. But if you speed
it up really fast, it goes really which is why
they call it the bloop. There you have it, which
is also why a lot of people thought the clover
Field Monster was Cathulu because apparently on the on the
official website, there was a bloop, was there? Yeah, they
tied it into a a fictional um slushy maker Japanese company,
(09:54):
and so that had something to do with it as well.
Once people started seeing the supplemental material, they started draw
their own conclusions, and of course they turned out to
be wrong. But it just shows how imaginative and passionate
the Lovecraft failure, and it shows how smart J. J.
Abrams is, the marketing genius, master marketer. So let's talk
a little bit more about the sure um. So the
(10:22):
text Strickland is often considered a book of spells. Most
of the people who get their hands on the Necronomicon
in lovecraft stories um end up using it to conjure
some of the Great Old Ones. Remember Cathulus, the priests
of the Great Old Ones. Um, and terrible, terrible things
happened this guy's open up. People tend to disappear in
(10:46):
in under terrible circumstances. And um the author. Let's talk
about the author of the Necronomicon. He himself, the mad
arab abdul al has read. That's correct, the mad arab
abdul l has read A fiend. Yes, the eighth century
Opium fiend from supposed to be supposedly a poet who
(11:07):
at some point gets this um. Well, I suppose he
gets some strange inspiration, possibly fueled by drugs, and writes
down this book called the Necronomicon, right, originally called al right,
and that that refers to a sound made by night
insects in the desert or demons howling, depending on who
(11:30):
you ask. Right, that's correct. And so we have this
this text that's supposed to be very rambling and crazy,
and uh. Interesting thing is that Lovecraft never wrote the
full Necronomicon. He actually wanted to create it, and and
dabbled on a shorter versions at one point, right, right,
he wrote a couple of passages from an abridged version,
(11:51):
and there are there are a few passages that are
that are fairly famous in lovecraft lore. But he wanted
to create this mythology where scholars in his world would
have certain books they would refer to whenever they needed
to study these creatures. Okay, and some of those books
actually were real, right, that's correct. Some of the books
were in fact real books that have a historical background.
(12:15):
Most of them were just figments of his imagination. He
created the Lovecrafts, I should say, a Lovecraft's imagination, not
the mad Arab. No, not the mad Arab. So yeah,
it's interesting. You're talking about an author Lovecraft who creates
this fictional author, the mad Arab, who in turn creates
a fictional book called the Necronomicon, parts of which Lovecraft
(12:38):
actually wrote outright, So that is the that is the
spoiler for those of you who weren't familiar with this
at all. Necronomicon completely fictional, mad Arab, completely fictional. And actually,
what's cool about um Strickland in the in the article
you make the point that the uh, the Necronomicon has
not only survived lovecraft death, it's thrived. You can find
(13:00):
um versions of it on Amazon. Um there's actual cults,
whether they realized that the Necronomic con or except that
the Necronomicon is fictitious, they still um this this philosophy
of the necronomic and still figures very much into their outlook.
Then there's other maybe I got the impression slightly nutt
(13:22):
of your cults that actually don't believe the Necronomicon. It
is fictional, right, but it's it's pervaded into reality. Correct. Yeah,
all of that is right. The uh it's it is
fascinating because since Lovecraft left such huge gaps with the Necronomicon,
you know, he only wrote little bits and pieces, it's
allowed other people to swoop in and fill in those
(13:43):
gaps and make money and make money. Yeah, I'll never forget.
I was in a bookstore. Um, I was in uh,
I think it was South Carolina. I was in a bookstore.
This is when I was a teenager, and I'm looking
through the books. I'm just trying to find something to read,
and I come across a copy of the Neck Anomicon,
and I had to stop and look again because I thought,
wait a minute, what why would I find a fictional
(14:07):
book in a bookstore? And so I took it down
and started reading it, and it was filled with lots
of of tortured kind of prose. No, it was terrible.
Did bite your hand when you try to grab it?
It did not? Reference will come back to that later. No, No,
it was. It was a terrible book. It was a
terrible attempt at trying to make a book sound really
(14:30):
dangerous and spooky. But it was transparent. I mean, it
was obvious that it was someone trying to be funny.
All Right, you guys, this reality parts boring. Let's go
back into the fictional world of Lovecraft in the Necronomicon. Okay,
where are we actually We're no, we're in no particular place.
We're just in this version of reality that Lovecraft created.
(14:51):
How about that? Oy? Alright, So within this world you
have various creatures, you have various books that all of
all of which are bad. I mean, that's just there
are people who think they can take advantage of them
and gain either power or knowledge or some combination thereof.
But it always turns out badly for them. In fact,
you kind of wonder why people keep bothering. Yeah, that's
(15:13):
really I mean, that's really what weird fiction is all about.
You're talking. When you use the word weird, you don't
just mean unusual, you mean incomprehensible to the human mind. Yeah.
I think Josh told me off Mike that. A lot
of other authors kind of have said that's a bit
of a cop out on lovecraft part because a lot
of times he doesn't have to end up being real
creative with his descriptions of things, and he can just say, well,
(15:37):
trust me, look upon it, and you shall go and
see or or unnamable. Yeah, and and I think it's brilliant.
But yeah, there's definitely an argument on either side. You
could argue that, well, the human imagination is so powerful
that if you leave it up to the individual reader,
it's that person is going to make his or her
own most horrifying creature. And there's nothing that you, as
(15:59):
the writer could describe because you don't know that person.
I don't know what would horrify that person exactly. But
by leaving it up to the to the reader's imagination, Uh,
suddenly you've made a much more effective monster, which is
kind of what they did with clover Field. Actually, they
did kind of tap into that because they didn't show
the monster very much at all, and I thought it
was effective. I like the movie. No, I I really
enjoyed that as well. I haven't seen it yet both
(16:20):
of you showed up. Oh sorry, spoiler alert, there's a monster.
Another thing I thought was cool was that Lovecraft at
one point said that there are um only a uh
several official copies of the Necronomicon located in I think
you listed five different libraries, and uh, two of them
don't even exist. So he he dabbled. Yes, he dabbled
(16:44):
so much between reality and fiction that I think it worked.
It ended up being like, you don't know what's real
and what isn't. Dude, we're back in Lovecraft's world. Okay, sorry,
so strickling. The Necronomicon was written by al has red Right,
and um he I believe he died fairly horribly. Either
he was swallowed up after conjuring somebody using the Necronomicon.
(17:08):
I think I remember another story where Lovecraft writes about
how he was beheaded but his head was still able
to speak. Um, there there's several different ways that he
supposedly died, but either way he died, but his book
survived and it stayed in Arabic, which actually I believe
none of the Arabic original copies in Arabic exist today.
(17:29):
But the UM in nine fifties, somebody else found it
and it was translated into Greek. Right, Yes, that's right.
There are actually several different translations UM that are mentioned
in Lovecraft's stories. Uh, there's Greek, there's there's Hebrew, there's
a few others. There's Latin. I think he said Alias
Wormings was a priest that translated into Latin, and then
(17:50):
it was banned by Pope Gregory nine. But in reality,
this is what I love the fiction. Again, you're not Catholic?
Was that not Pope Gregory nine? The nine? Okay, yeah,
but Gregory the Night? Uh? In reality that Elias Warmius
was actually a Dutch physician, so there was no tide
there whatsoever. Yeah, that was the mixture of reality and fantasy. Um. Now,
(18:12):
the the really cool stuff, as far as I'm concerned
here is that that he's he's built up a believable
enough base that if you were to just read the
story without without any other background information, you could totally
buy into this mythology. He's really made it very rich
and believable. He's he's he's anchored it in reality and um.
(18:35):
And there are lovecraft Ian scholars and fans who will
talk of this as if it were all real, as
if these Greek and and other translations of the Necronomicon
do in fact exist and are in fact in these libraries. Right. Well,
I know what earlier we were talking and I thought
it was odd that he would use people like Elias
warmis their name, which you know was a physician, and
(18:57):
then in six Dr John D was an Englishman and
a magician, when in fact he was really just an
adviser to Queen Elizabeth. And I thought, well, how strange
to use these real people like wouldn't he be found out?
But you said that, you know, this is the nine twenties,
and there weren't You couldn't go up on the internet
and look up who John D was, right, And now
you had people who those names would sound familiar, and
(19:18):
they think, hey, that does lead leads some credence to
this and I and I also compared it to Bram Stoker,
who did base Dracula off of the real person Vlad Tepish.
But if you were to look into Vlad tepish Is life,
you would see that it doesn't really parallel Dracula at all.
You could just see where the inspiration came from. But
because you have laud Dre Cool, you have this whole
(19:40):
persona there, it lends your story a stronger base in reality. Yeah,
like you guys said, the Lovecraft is a master at
mixing reality and fiction, like with the libraries where you
could supposedly find the Necronomicon, but also he would pepper
um some of the books like on the shelves ire
were in the strange case of Charles dexter Ward his
(20:03):
ancestor what was his ancestors name, I don't remember either, um,
but he there was there were tons of books of
magic and the occult, and some of them were real,
like the Rs Magna at Ultima uh, and they would
be sitting alongside the Necronomicon. So there were some that
were real and some that weren't. Um. And not only
(20:23):
did Lovecraft write about that, he would use books that
some of his contemporaries had made upright in his books,
and they would do just the same, right, they would
mention the Necronomicon in their books. Yeah, there was a
lot of cross pollination going on at this time, where
you would. Lovecraft loved having friends who were also authors.
(20:44):
He was prolific letter writer, and he encouraged his friends
to write stories set in his mythology, and then he
would write stories there's as well. So you started to
get this really rich background that didn't exist in other
authors works. Because I mean, in a way, it's almost
like writing fan fiction, except in this case, the people
(21:04):
who are writing fan fiction are really well known authors, right, right,
But that continues today. You still have people writing within
Lovecraft's mythology, and of course, you know, it's expanded beyond
just writing books. It's also in movies and television. Right.
There's some pretty pretty noteworthy cameos that the Necronomicon has made,
(21:25):
most notably in the Evil Dead series. Yes that was
it an Evil Dead or just Evil Dead too, No,
it's in It's an Evil Dead, Evil Dead to an
Army of Darkness. Army of Darkness actually was my favorite
scene with the Necronomicon because he has to approach it
on the hill and repeat the Klatu varata and then
which the last word isn't that from the day the
(21:48):
Earth still? Yeah, that's actually that was the one of
the things about Yes, Sam Raimi just loves to quote
from other movies and and and science fiction, horror everything.
I mean, he's he's one of those guys who just
has like that huge Labrintheian Library of of Trivia instead
and so yeah, he brought a lot of that out
into those movies. But the interesting thing about the Necronomicon
(22:09):
and those and those movies is that it doesn't really
resemble the one in Lovecraft stories. Right. It's the Book
of the Dead is what they call it, and evil
dead and it's a or at least an army of darkness.
It was like this, uh had an evil face. It
was like leather bound, but had a mouth and eyes,
and that's why it bit him when he tried to
pick it up, which is what I was referencing right right.
It's actually bound in flesh and written in blood. Yeah, yeah,
(22:32):
and it's uh, it's a little different from the Necronomicon
and Lovecraft stories. But the Necronomicon, you gotta admit, that's
an awesome name for an evil book. So it totally
made sense to to reference it, you know, and a
lot of people I think have sort of a passing
familiarity with Lovecraft stories stuff, so if you mentioned it,
(22:53):
they get the idea, oh, that's an evil book. They
don't need to have this wealth of information in their heads.
So my favorite reference, um, and you actually pointed out
in the article Strick is um the appearance of the
Necronomicon in the Simpsons. You guys see this one. It
was in the episode Brawl in the Family where there's
a meeting of the Republican Party and Mr Burns goes
(23:17):
and now Bob Dole will read from the Necronomicon. And
Bob Dole comes to the podium and he's wearing like
a black robe and he starts channing in Latin and
reading from the book. It's perfect. Yeah, My I think
my favorite is when it makes a very very brief
appearance in Friday of the Thirteenth, Part nine, Jason goes
to Hell. It's it's just it's one of those things
where the camera's just panning by and if you pay attention,
(23:39):
you see, hey, that's the Necronomicon from the Evil Dead movies. Yeah,
it's just it's just there in in the shot. I mean,
there's no reference to it. No one picks it up.
Where was it? Was it like Jason's house, Yeah, it's
it's towards the it's towards the end of the movie.
There's a few different references. I think you also, if
you look, you see a crate that's labeled Arctic Expedition,
So fans of horror movies, you'll know what that's from. Too,
(24:01):
so awesome. Jason goes to Hell? Was that was that?
That was also in Pumpkinhead two? Yep. Also in Aquitine
Hunger Force, which we love, and The Real Ghostbusters, The
Grim Adventures of Billion Mandy and metal Lock. You don't
know that that's that's the that's the cartoon on Adult
(24:24):
Swim that details the misadventures of a death metal band
called death Clock. You almost said adventures, very nice catch.
Misadventures much different. So this was actually in strict Thank
you so much for coming in, dude, you say this,
this is one of those every once in a while
we'll do a podcast where like this is just the
tip of the iceberg. Go read the article. You clearly
(24:47):
should go read these articles. If we piqued your interest
in all. First of all, go start reading Lovecraft. He's awesome. Um.
He was also an awesome person his real life. He
he had a woman that he lived with who was
old enough to be his mother, that he love up
very much. But people posit that they never consummated their relationship.
Is that correct? Yep. He was just an all around
(25:07):
weird guy, but really sweet and cute and um not
really well I think he does in that nine He
doesn't have like uh, yeah, you're right, um, but he
he was an interesting character, uh, an incredible writer and
uh Strickland wrote two really good articles on him. So
if you want to read more about it, you can
(25:28):
go to how stuff works dot com and typing cthulu
c t h U l U in the search bar.
You could also type in necronomicon, which would be spelled
n E c R O n O M I c
O and necronomicon you can find both of those articles.
(25:48):
And I think if you type you those words in
the Google in general, you're going to find a whole
world away to you. Just interesting stuff. Interesting way to
waste some time. You dare not speak it and look
at it or you shall go insane. And also we
can all look forward to the day the stars aligne
and the Stone City of Relay rises up out of
(26:09):
the ocean and takes possession of the Earth again, and
we are all screwed awesome, or as we would say
in love Crafts universe, Yeah yeah, kutula fatagan. No better
way to end then for that, no better way to
end the than that? All right, Well, since Strickling just
said something that we can't pronounce ourselves, that means it's
listener mail time. Alright, So Chuck, what do you have
(26:35):
for us today? You're just gonna call this the saddest
thing I've ever heard. This is from Vic in Lincolnshire, Illinois.
It's a little lengthy. If I'm gonna I'm gonna read
it fast. Vic is a listener who has borrowed his
daughter's iPod and definitely he said, I was kind of
taking it over. That is the saddest thing I've ever
uh And he he This came about as a suggestion
(26:57):
that we do something on wrongful death lassy bots or
just wrongful death period. I don't Back in nine seventy
my dad had a heart attack and was hospitalized in
the co ordinary care unit. They had trouble stabilizing his
heart rhythm and decided to implant a temporary demand pacemaker.
I guess in theory, when his heart needed and assist,
(27:17):
the pacemaker would kick in and get things back on track.
We went to visit him the next morning. We could
tell that everything was kind of crazy in the CCU,
people in a frenzy, all kinds of activity, and we
stood beside my father talking to him. I was sixteen
years old, and I was fascinated with the ocloscope on
the shelf above his head, routinely drawing a regular paced heartbeat,
(27:38):
now familiar from all the medical shows in the last
forty years. Okay, the nurse on duty saw us at
dad's bed and quickly came over to clean him up
for the visitors, comb his hair shave him. She was
running late and hurriedly plugged his electric shaver into the outlet,
the same outlet as the temporary pacemaker power supply. Almost immediately,
(27:59):
the heartbeat trade went wild on the monitor. I had
my eyes on it the whole time. It first confused
as to whether I was seeing electronic interference or actual
interference with the beating of my dad's heart. It quickly
became clear that it was a ladder. My dad yelled,
almost leaping out of bed and fell back dead. Oh
my god, right in front of his face. At sixteen
(28:19):
in the hospital because the nurse plugged this thing in.
Wow awful, no happy ending here. They tried in vain
to revive my father, aged fifty nine. A wrongful death
lawsuit ensued, but my mother became too sick to go
through with it. My understanding is that the pacemaker technology
is vastly improved over the years. I'm not sure if
there are other stories like mine. And here's a little
interesting side note. At the end uh in the CCU
(28:43):
at sixteen, I noticed four little shelves about seven feet
off the ground in the corners of the room. I
asked the resident past or what they were there for.
He informed me that someone was doing an experiment with
near death out of body experiences because of the high
quote traffic in that room. Apparently there were cards with
little shape on them, one on top of the on
top of the shelves. Have my dad been revived, they
(29:04):
would have asked him if he were called hovering above
his bed and did he look down and see those shapes? Weird?
So that is a side note, and Vic, it's a
hell of a side note. This is a long time ago,
and I wrote you back and said I was very
sorry to hear about this, but it was a great story.
And thanks for sharing. And we will definitely add wrongful
death lawsuits to the suggestion box for sure. And thanks
(29:27):
for sharing that interesting and awful story. If you have
any interesting or awful stories, or you just want to
say hi, or what up? Or what what does it mentioned? Unicorns?
Maybe sure you can put in an email and send
that to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com
(29:49):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page. Yeah, brought to you by the reinvented
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