Are you interested in angels? Demons, spirits, ghosts, monsters. Are you curious about the origins? An influence upon history and on the present day? If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Seven Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more.
I'm very pleased to bring you an interview with Rocky from Macabre World Podcast. I was a guest on her podcast a few weeks ago, and she graciously agreed to come talk about some of her interest and worldviews, and it was a ton of fun being able to speak to her. In the first part of our interview, which you're about to hear, uh I relay an experience of uh encountering a skunk at Harvard Yard while I was walking back to my dorm room. And as chance would have it, I encountered another one on uh Thursday night.
I was taking my dog out for her last walk for the night at midnight, and for those that don't know, I have a very large dog. She's probably about 110 pounds. She's a stray that I rescued three or four years ago now, and she was seven when I got her. But she was a little bit wild when it comes to walking on a leash, but ever since then she's been perfectly fine. I've got her trained up. She knows what she should do, what she shouldn't do, normally.
But that night, for some reason, I had turned around to close the door, and she then yanked the leash from my hand, something she has not done in a good three years, and then goes to investigate something, and she is not used to being by herself. I just knew I had lost her. I ran up my basement stairs, and I see her in the corner of my yard. I run over to get her, and I know something is wrong. She is like has a snarl on her face, she's rubbing her head into the grass, and then I get a little bit closer, and the smell hits me.
Apparently, she had seen a black and white animal that she just had to go chase after, and wouldn't you know it? It was a skunk. So past couple of days I have been dealing with a horrendous smell. Yes, I gave her a bath immediately. A couple of baths, actually. Tried a couple of uh homemade uh solutions that I found on the web. Nothing really worked all that well, and but luckily the smell is now fading, but it has uh it's definitely been a source of distraction to put it mildly.
Anyway, the only thing else I wanted to say before we get into the interview is if you wouldn't mind, please rate and subscribe uh whatever platform that you happen to listen to the podcast on. That will help me tremendously. Otherwise, sit back, relax, and enjoy the really entertaining and enlightening conversation that I got to have with Rocky. Thank you very much. I have as a distinct pleasure Rocky from the Macabre World Podcast with us. You can find the link to her podcast on the Friends of the Show site on Southern Demonology.com. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Hey JJ, it's great to be here. We had a lot of fun chatting on my podcast. So I'm only happy to come and chat on yours. How are things? Tell me what's going on. What's going on in the Demon South there, my friend?
Oh, so so much. I actually just got through wrapping up uh a two-part interview with a person from Cookville, Tennessee, who's a member of a paranormal research group. Uh, and that's actually coming out here. Um, actually, by the time this goes out, both episodes will have already appeared on our site. But yeah, that was a a great chat. How's everything over in macabre world?
Well, macabre world is uh based out of New Jersey. I'm in South New Jersey. I'm originally from uh southeastern New England. I grew up in Rhode Island. Um so I'm a little bit of a misfit in Jersey, but I think actually if you look around Jersey, you'll see it's a great place to be a misfit. So there's plenty of that going on.
Washington, DC, so yeah.
Right, you know, well, I I gotta tell you, I I like I like a cosmopolitan area. I like an area that's got people from all kinds of countries, people from all kinds of places. North, south, you know, old country, new country. There's a whole lot going on. I think that's that's I think my favorite thing about and and I know that the Northeast is not everybody's favorite area of the country because it is it is very, you know, population dense. Our property taxes are so exorbitant. I'm I'm always amazed that you don't actually have to be uh Solomon to own a house here.
You know, it and things like that that are crazy, but there it's really cosmopolitan. You have a lot of people that came in from the immigrant waves, my family is an immigrant family, and then you have folks that you know uh are from different parts of the country than and that have gravitated here either for business, Philadelphia is here, you know, nearby. So it's there's lots of stories and lots of stuff, and and I really enjoy that because I always got something going on, but I miss New England.
I I will actually can you can you actually pinpoint when you fell in love with the cosmopolitan area? Because I I'll tell you mine real quick. I went to New York City for the very first time, and I'm from the smallest town in Tennessee. It was a complete like world-breaking event for me. And I went on the Staten Island Ferry for the very first time, and I heard 50 languages being spoken around me, and I knew right then and there that language was always going to be an ultimate fascination.
You know, it's that's a hell of a view, isn't it, when you come in on the Staten Island Ferry. For me, I I had a uh my town is Bristol, Rhode Island. It's a small peninsula in Narragansu Bay in Rhode Island. I think our our at the time growing up in the 19 uh the the late 60s, early seventies for me, at the that at that time I think our big thing was we had a few factories, we have a lot of commercial fishing, it's a big heavy commercial fishing area.
And a lot of immigrants at the time, the first wave of immigration in that area was the Italians, and then the next wave were the Portuguese, mainly for their fishing trades, because uh and most of the Portuguese are from the Azores. So I'm half Portuguese and half Italian, and my mom's family's from the Azores. So it all kind of makes sense. I'm what I call a true Bristol hybrid. So growing up, I heard more than one language. I learned a good fair bit of Portuguese growing up.
I wouldn't say I'm fully bilingual because I, you know, a lot of it was just food and angry words, but um you know, there's a there's a lot of that going on. I got better at it as time goes on because I wanted to figure out what the adults were talking about. I was that like big sneaky little kid that wanted to know what the adults were saying. So Portuguese was code and I and I had to crack the code. So that's kind of how I learned a language basically out of spite.
Oh, that was awesome.
You know. But um so I had this, but it is a microcosm. And I think when we talk about the difference in in, you know, it doesn't seem like a town that at the time probably had maybe 15,000 people in those days. It's probably over 30 now. But which is a relatively small town compared to your town, not so much, but it it in general that's a relatively small town. It was a little fishing village, you know, that was uh in between Providence and Newport. And now it's like Little Newport.
In fact, my my late father before he passed, looked at our you know, regular house in a regular neighborhood on a regular street and said, you know, if I didn't outlive my mortgage, I couldn't afford to live here. So, you know, it's one of those places that kind of got built up, but uh I still have family there. So I went to college in Boston and uh that was that was kind of an experience because Bristol, Rhode Island at the time was was diverse in the sense of we had all kinds of you know, Mediterranean people, but I didn't have all kinds of other people.
So I mean, you know, we had lots of Portuguese folks, we had lots of Italian folks. Somebody heard that so-and-so's aunt was Greek, and then you know, and that was a little bit of a mix in there. We had and I love it all, to be honest with you. You know, I think the more melts the better. And and the I think they're a great melting point are two things, food and horror movies. Yep.
You know, and and and the the some of the greatest conversations I've had about horror movies and things with with people from learning where your common ground is. Did you know that the word and I and I somebody's gonna write in and tell you what it is because I can't remember it. My late friend Sophie told me the word for vampire in Greek apparently means um poop eater. I'm I'm cleaning that up. And uh and and that's that's what they the word for vampire. And she also taught me her spinacopota. So that's how this works. You know, you gotta have that's why you have popcorn at the movies.
Food and horror goes together.
Amen to that.
I think we need to I you know are the people from the cooking channel listening because they need to do a show where where you have food and horror, you know, the the world's most horrible chefs or something. I don't know.
That would actually be a phenomenal thing.
It would be somebody get on that. All right, readers, right, listeners, readers, everybody.
Actually, it's funny when you approach a language from a uh like a nerd culture type of perspective, sure, it's kind of weird how you get much more specific vocabulary, even though your general language skills are lacking. So for Japan, like in my household, I have two different languages being spoken constantly, Chinese and Japanese, in addition to English. Usually all three fuse together in some weird combination that makes my head hurt. Fair. But I was uh talking to my wife and I was like, Yeah, you know what uh uh Ketsky is, right? She's like, Nope. I'm like, it's vampire, come on.
She's like, Nope, never heard of that. I went, okay.
Well, you know, the the words can also change dialect-wise, especially for for some of, like you said, the more deeper, more interesting words. We talked on our on on my podcast about some of the ancient horrors in the modern world, and and I said in a side convo that one of the things I'm enjoying about our emerging uh colleagueship is that we both kind of take that ancient world on the modern twist. We both have vestiges of that in our areas of interest, in our areas of study, and in our experience, where old meets new, old country, new country, that kind of thing.
Because when I was a kid, I I mean when I'm a little kid, you know, eventually I got geography like, you know, to a reasonable level. But when you're really little, you actually think when you listen to all the grown-ups talking around you, that there is a real country that's just this giant landmass called the old country. And you know how people got here from the old country on one one particular vessel, and it's called the boat. Because whenever you heard, you know, oh, that's Mrs. So-and-so, she came over on the boat with your grandmother from the old country.
And you know, and that's so that's the kind of thing. And and so it it was a different kind of cosmopolitan, if if this makes any kind of sense. When I got to Boston and I went to into college and I got mixed in with a far more diverse crowd of people, I realized just how strange I was.
You know, instead of it making you feel like more normal and more I just felt weirder and weirder because I mean I grew up with this old world kind of mentality and you know, this sort of like clan-ish thing, and and they're here and now I'm with all these kinds of people and everybody But once again, food and horror movies.
You know, you learn how to how to get into it and and and talk to people about their experiences, about their culture and about their food and get their speech up at a recipe and learn how to make all kinds of cool stuff and and listen to what what their cultures are like and that's that's how it gets But I like a cosmopolitan culture because I like the variety. I'm not the person who goes to the buffet and just eats the macaroni and cheese. I I definitely want to try stuff. I want to talk to people and and figure out what what's making them tick.
And this like I said, this old world, new world thing. It amazes me how many um cultures we have and there's still valid arguments on and I say valid arguments, I mean strong with support arguments on whether or not there is any kind of an afterlife and on whether or not good and evil in the spiritual sense actually exists. And I think it's interesting that we've come this far. We can put a man on the moon, but we can't really settle whether or not there is some sort of everlasting, and we're always looking for for proof.
Not only that, but there's also just some basics of philosophy. That, you know, we have a ton, every philosopher comes up with their own concept of a particular idea, whether it's utilitarianism or morality or justice or whatever it may be, and yet we still have no sense of what may be the best or the metaphysical true, whatever you may want to make of it. I mean, we still consider our philosophy of government to be an experiment. I mean, it's just we have such a have you read the paper lately, JJ?
It is an experiment.
It is, especially these days. I has certainly proven to stress it a good bit, but uh, but I'm so glad that you said uh um the thing about feel feeling weirder, because uh I think we had that in common too. I went to grad school in Boston, and yeah, I mean, I like my college was just a group of a thousand guys out in the woods in the middle of Virginia, so there wasn't too much of a differentiator there besides most of them were rich and I was dirt poor. Right. Uh but when I went to Boston, oh my gosh, I felt like the ultimate uh hack. Like, do I really should I really be here?
There was one night that I was walking back from the library to my dorm room, and I saw a skunk walking parallel to me in a uh, you know, uh in line with me, and I almost broke down crying because it reminded me of home because it was wildlife that I have not seen in forever.
It was plenty of wildlife in Boston and isn't smoking too furry. Yeah. Well, you know, and and and I I always like to differentiate that there is a pretty big difference between a Rhode Islander and a Bostonian, and if nothing else, the Bostonian will vehemently agree. Um but you know, it both and oddly enough the accents aren't even the same. But that there is a culture shock.
You know, I I come from this little harbor town, fishing town with this European flair, and and you come from a small place, you know, with with a lot of nature and everything, and all of a sudden we're in the middle of that.
And there's trains and planes and you know, it was cra it was crazy. I think my my only my only problem with uh the big H is that uh apparently when people meet people from New England, one of their catchphrases they enjoy having them say involves where one parks one vehicle. Yes.
And and in a particular so all I have to sell if anybody's gone, you know, do you pack your cat and have it yet? I say, well, yeah, they're gonna tell you to Somerville though. Sure, but they're gonna tell you to Somerville.
And that's actually where I lived when I was Meffa. Oh my god.
Yeah, it's a good time. You know, it's it's there's there's so many cool stories coming out of Boston. I mean, Boston is a cool place. You've got that whole, like I said, the old world thing that that uh that really sinks in there. Providence, Rhode Island is um an undercurrent of weird on the east side. Of course, you have that is the stomping grounds, birthplace, and final resting place of the American author H.P. Lovecraft.
And I, you know, I think a lot of us weirdlings, when we start adventuring out and reading past our, you know, our assigned reading and I know that not everybody does that. I'm gonna guess the kind of folks listening to your podcast read beyond the assigned reading. Yeah, I'll read it if you all enjoy it. Yeah. So so so we're all the smart weird kids.
And you know, when you start reading stuff like Lovecraft, when when you start reading, you know, about the Cthulhu and and all of that, and um and it's just it's a mastery of horror that is bringing like this very primal fear into this civilized world. Because he's writing in like you know, Victoria post Victorian society, quite polite society, but there are rats in the walls. There's problems, you know, and and and the inner madness of the mind. And even even if you go back further, authors like Edgar Allen Poe, you look at what they're doing.
So you you got these horror authors that are taking impolite. Horrific ideas and thrusting them in the confines of polite society and culturally. I think that's what we do. We're taking these ancient ideas that are uncomfortable. We spoke of the movie The Prophecy. Yep.
I'm not too comfortable with an angel war. I don't know about you. I I don't like the idea. If there's something more powerful than me that it's arguing amongst itself, I find that unsettling.
Yeah, absolutely is. Did Lovecraft actually kind of like truly resonate with you because of where you're from? I mean, did that make it more real for you?
When yes. And and I think I can also actually tell you there's like an aftershock echo with Stephen King. And in both cases, their surroundings. It's one thing, all right. The way I can describe it to somebody listening casually is it's one thing to watch a movie in a town that's like your town. Like how many times maybe you saw some towns and in a in a movie and and oh that looks like my town. And then it's another thing when it actually is your town. Because all of your plugged-in experiences, all of your lifetime uh influences around that locale now come into play.
You have fleshed out what the writer is doing. So I think when it's something that resonates when it's home, like when um the beginning, the first few pages, uh I'm not gonna give any spoilers, I never do that, uh, of uh Stephen King, so it's been out for a long time now, but the book's uh sell. The first few pages describe an event in Boston Common. And when you read those first few pages, I don't know if you've read the book, you if you have been there, basically they're standing on a corner that I stood on many times to cross. They're on the corner opposite Park Street. Yep, exactly.
You know what I'm saying? So you know, and and and so while Stephen King is telling you about this this location or HP Lovecraft is talking about walking down Benefit Street, my mind, which has walked down Benefit Street and stood at that corner uh uh in in the uh Boston Common, I'm thinking, I'm fleshing it out. So I think it resonates with a lot of people. When you have an identity that roots into that moment, I think that's when horror and I think that's the key to horror, is they have to capture, they have to make you comfortable and make you feel at home, and then they scare you.
Yeah, in fact, I mean King especially, he you know, he has this knack of not only kind of launching into like, you know, introspections into what a character's, you know, headspace is truly like, but you know, one of the keys to him is the fact that he can take the most mundane idea and turn it weird, so weird that it makes you question everything else that inhabits that reality. And you know, say what you want about you know, King being mass media or whatever, but he is a master when it comes to just flipping reality on its head and making you look at it.
And I think that's what one of the you know the best aspects of horror is, you know, if it can make you question every little thing that you've held an assumption about forever, then that has been affected.
Yeah, you know, he made us afraid of cars. Yep, you know, and it didn't have to be a vampire, it didn't have to be a mummy or a ghost, it was a car. Christine was a car. You know, I think I think plots like um like Carrie took something that was curious, telekinesis, and used it. If you want to talk about and and I know that times have changed, and I'm in I'm I'm absolutely one hundred percent in favor of the more recent uptick of concern and and low tolerance for bullying. But I got bullied in school. And and I think a lot of people did.
And if you want to think of like the ultimate b anti bullying campaign was the movie with or the book Carrie. I remember when I read that, I'm like, oh that would be so cool. You know. And and which is psychotic because now you're saying, Yeah, I'd love to like, you know, drop things on the heads of my classmates. And but when you're a bullied kid, you say, you know, I wish what you wish for, I mean it's fantasy, but what you wish for is you wish for a way to fight back.
Right.
And and because you're in your in your non-fantasy normal realm, you don't have it. And I often wonder, you know, when what are our weapons? You know, we if we're not telekinetic. Some people try to fight these things with, you know, shock value, some treat or five people, you know, don't fight at all, they just fold up and collapse like a flan at a cupboard. Some people will, you know, call on a higher power.
It's there's there's a lot of a lot of interesting defenses that that you know because ultimately I'm trying to remember and after where I was anywhere yesterday, I was outside all day and it was almost a hundred degrees, so I basically stuck my brain in a pressure cooker for eight hours. So if I sound a little bit like I'm disconnected, that's why. There's parts of me that are still in the red. But I I I can't I I think you know, Carrie was vanquished in the end. She basically like imploded upon herself more or less the the plot line.
But you know what the good and evil fight is a theme through life, through culture, through ancient, through, you know and everything is is based on that. I mean, horror we like horror movies where we have a happy ending. Why do we need that happy ending?
Oh, in fact, I think some of the best horror movies in general are ones in which simply do not either don't have an ending at all or the ending that they give is the worst ending imaginable.
The unsatisfying ending.
The Mist or is it The Mist by uh Stephen King? I know it's not a a great movie, but the ending to that movie what have you seen it?
I have not. Um I I kind of like went on a I I love Stephen King, but I gotta say this, and this is just my personal opinion. Don't write me letters, don't write JJ letters. Um, this is my personal opinion. I think because he raps you so much in the story that it became apparent as he went on, got more commercially uh successful, his endings got weaker and weaker.
I would agree with that.
And and I don't know if it's because all of a sudden he said, Oh shit, I gotta wrap this up. Uh oh poop, I gotta wrap this up. Or if, you know, it's he because it was the meat and the potatoes, not the cleanup that that I thought was where he excelled.
Oh, I mean uh character development, secondary. Exactly. That is, I mean, he inherited a tradition of that, and in the beginning it was so strong, and yeah, I I I I do agree that it has become much, much weaker. But the the ending to the mist is it's the it's the way in which you would never ever if you if that was you, you would never ever ever want to have that happen to you or you to commit what happened in that movie. And it was just for that reason alone, the rest of the sins of that movie were washed away just because that ending was line.
I you know, it's there's a whole lot of what would you do. Like I I do paranormal investigating, I do it more as a hobby now, I'm not affiliated with any group at the present time. A zillion years ago, and by zillion I mean like the I don't know, mid to late nineties. Um I was a member of the Atlantic Paranormal Society, being I'm from Rhode Island. There was only one ghost hunting group, and that was where I met Jay Hawes, uh Steve Gonsalves and and Grant from Ghost Hunters, the original ghost hunting series.
And we used to meet in a Starbucks in um Warwick, Rhode Island and and have and and and I I did a couple of investigations with them, and some of the people from the early show are still good friends with them and like the demon twins, uh Carl and Keith Johnson. They're delightful humans. And and I I I should point out I had Carl as a as a podcast guest, he's a brilliant podcast guest, highly recommend.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah, he was one of the first he and his brother were uh very early on in the initial investigations of the Perone House, which later became the basis for the movie The Conjuring. So they have a lot of perspective that that that is a lot of backstory to that to that type of thing. I always felt bad for those people. They would drag those nice people into the newspapers and on the on the TV every Halloween.
Somebody talked to a Perone family person in Rhode Island, you know, like, oh god, you know it was Halloween because they're gonna drag those poor people out and make them talk about that kooky house. I felt so bad for them. No, because you know, i it put it this way, whether you're a believer or not is immaterial at that point, and it I just always felt like they're they were violated.
Oh, no, I completely agree.
You know, I I just felt really good.
There were those in which like, you know, they were up for the taste of fame that their cases have brought to them, thinking like Amityville, and then there were others that were just deer in the headlights, and you felt so bad for them every time a reporter wanted to come knocking.
Right. You know, and that's and do you know they changed the they changed the windows, the the the infamous uh windows in the Amityville house, the the windows that really yeah, the the windows that we all picture from the original movie poster, those sort of like orange slice quarter moons, those are gone, and there are regular windows in its place, which is probably um to throw people a little bit off the scent.
More than likely. Okay, can I ask you a slightly controversial question?
Oh yeah.
I would love to get other people's opinions. What is your personal thinking around Ed and Lorraine Warren?
I actually met Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Really?
Yes. In the early 90s. I was uh on a I worked with uh historical cemetery preservation or something that's still very active with that. And I was on a remember when cable access was a thing? Cable access was great. It gave us more than Wayne's world. We all had our wacky little shows and our wacky little communities. And I was on a panel about uh some of the historical cemetery. It was basically again at the Halloween time. And not in my segment, but in another segment where Ed and Lorraine wore it.
And I had heard of them because the Amineyville thing happened, but they certainly were more local fascinations and they had a little bit of a little bit of like, you know, they were on Phil Donahue or something, you know. And kind of thing. And I I met them only very briefly and I didn't have an in-depth conversation. They were I at face value a very polite, delightful, warm, engaging couple. In fact, if you I didn't if you didn't know what their story was and you just saw them having lunch, you wouldn't they there is no there was no no air of the kookie about them actually.
They were very, very normal, delightful people. Um I do I do think that uh you know I find them sincere, but even a bull in a china shop isn't sin sincere, you know? So I think there were times where Ed may have come off as a bull in a china shop, but I think he meant well. I I don't think there was any ill intentions. I don't think they were looking to defraud anyone. I think that they were researchers in an area they were researchers, they were suddenly research, really, in an area that they weren't planning to be researchers in. They kind of fell into it.
So, you know, you it's a lot different. If you get a guy that's like, you know, into the scientific method and he plans to research something, you're gonna lay things out a little differently than when all of a sudden it all starts happening around you, and like, well, so here we are. So I think that they I think that um I think that they didn't plan to become researchers and I think that they had to lay a lot of their groundwork on the fly, and I think some of the criticism that they face is because they sort of got dropped into it.
But I I I I would have a hard time thinking that either one of the people that I've read about and and briefly met had any ill-intention, it would be very, very surprising to me. So do I think they're perfect? No. Do I think they're the be all end all? No. Do I think they they are or were sincere uh researchers? I do. I think the whole thing about where he was doing exorcisms was weird though.
I I I would completely agree with that. And honestly, you know, if you've read any of their books, it's almost like they my only complaint is that they tried to throw on a Hollywood ending to everything, where you know, everything that they ever touched suddenly displayed gross abuses of power. And I I I don't really I don't really know if I can buy that. Uh that just doesn't ring true with anything that I've ever encountered. But, you know, then again, it's just healthy skepticism from my end. I'm not saying that's that's the way it is.
So well, you know, there's there's it's it's a controversial subject. I think I think it also gets very subjective.
Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com where you can find all of our social and podcasting links. Also, if you have a moment, please feel free to rate this podcast and leave any encouraging feedback that you may have. As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.