Are you interested in angels, demons, ghosts, spirits, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, influence, and how to protect against the unknown? If so, then welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more. Today I want to talk about not a particular horror movie, or at least an entire horror movie, but rather the small pieces which remain and stick with us, sometimes in perpetuity, and I have a few that I really want to call out.
And these are ones that, although the entire movie in and of itself, may not have been anything special, they have these shining moments that stand out above and beyond anything else. And the first one for me is the Dawn of the Dead remake. The movie itself is fine, I suppose. It definitely had some great music and some fantastic visuals. But the thing that really got to me was the scene where things initially went south. The woman is with her husband, they wake up in bed together, and then they witness hell breaking loose. Normalcy is transformed into a nightmare in a split second.
And that moment when she is fleeing through her suburban neighborhood, which is in America at least supposed to be the pitcher of normalcy, really shook me to the point where I sat there and was afraid to open my front door without peeking out of it for a good six weeks or so because I was so afraid that a human-shaped cannonball was going to be launching itself at me teeth first. But beyond just fear, these movies can have an even more potent effect upon a person. The movie that stands out to me in that regard is the prophecy.
There's a scene where they enter into a cave and they see angelic script written upon the cave wall, and then visions of the war in heaven. But it was that script that absolutely captured my attention and led me on a hunt to determine exactly what that script was and how to read it. And even though at that point I was just a beginner student in ancient Semitic languages, I was determined to find out about it. And that led me on an on-again, off again, multi-year hunt to figure it out, from asking professors to digging through libraries.
And I finally tracked it down, the exact sickles that were used in a very small specialty library at Harvard. And it turns out that it was from a magical text written in the 16th century that depicted angelic names and astrological symbols. And I'm not going to say that this little academic side quest, as it were, was a major defining moment in my career nor my studies. But it really did kind of help cement in my head that this is the path that I should be following. That language can not only directly hint at meaning, perhaps it may also point to a little bit of magic that lies beneath it.
And that may be one of the reasons that I delved into all of the strange things that Second Temple Judaism and the Pseudopigrapha had to offer. But these moments don't just have to come from movies. One of the great things about short-form videos is that they can really capture the imagination. And I did speak about this on the Mains podcast in season three. But I ran across a TikTok video that was the closest depiction that I have ever seen of my terrifying encounter with some sort of spirit when I was living in Japan.
And that video scared me so bad that I almost threw my device across the room. And upon re-watching it with my wife, I did drop my device. And that's going to do it for this episode of Bite. This has been JJ, your friendly ancient demonologist, reminding you that even though the movie may be middling, it doesn't mean that you should avoid taking those little pieces that really stick with you and cherishing them. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com, which offers links to all of our social media and episodes.
Southern Demonology is solely owned, produced, and edited by myself, and the intro and outro music are composed by me as well. If you have a moment, please rate, like, and share this podcast, as it is the best way to help support my work. As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure to speak to you today.