Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, tales, and influence upon history any on the present day? If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Southern Demon Knowledge, the podcast that explores all of this and more.
As always, I'm your host, JJ. Before jumping into the mix, I do want to announce that I have finally gotten around to updating both Southerndemonology.com and my Podchaser page. Now on my website, you'll see all guest appearances that I have been on in the aptly named appearances page. Can you believe that? In case you ever wanted to hear more of my own lovely voice, and please note the sarcasm. And speaking of guest appearances, I will be a guest on Vestiges After Dark on Tuesday, August 29th. I'll have a link to their channel in the show notes in case you want to check that out.
One last thing to note on the website: you will no longer see a Twitter logo or a link to that particular dumpster fire. Not because it decided to change its name at 3 a.m. in the morning with no forethought or consideration whatsoever, but as I have officially deactivated Southern Demonology's account there. And before anyone asks or decides to write hate mail about that, this is absolutely not politically driven. I have extremely few roles up on the Discord server, and they are ones that I live by on this podcast as well. No sexism, no racism, and no politics.
I simply detest the man and have for years. And the damage that he has wrought on the internet's town hall is immense and heartbreaking. However, on a more positive note, I do have a shiny new threads logo and link. So feel free to follow me there if you'd like. You can also find all of the links to all the various social media platforms on my link tree and on the website. That link will be in the notes as well. I never thought that 2023 would have me supporting Meta over any other social media company, but here we are. To say the least, it's been a very, very strange year.
A few weeks ago, I had someone in our Discord server ask a pretty simple question. Are there any paranormal experiences that are positive in nature? I'd love to know your thoughts on this question as well. But the only things that I could think of are encounters with loved ones. I spoke about this in the episode in memoriam, but before my uncle passed away, he told my mom that when she heard the sound of a Dutch whipplewheel, then that would be the sign that he would send to her to let her know that he was okay.
For those not in the know, a Dutch whipplewheel is a rather rare sound to hear now. But sure enough, the moment he passed away, she went outside, and the first thing she heard was indeed a Dutch whipplewheel calling. Or how about the time that when my grandmother passed? My mom walked into her room, into the living room, and she saw my grandmother's nightgown glide out of my grandmother's room. Or how about after my mom's aged cocker spaniel sugar passed and for weeks afterwards anyone who walked into the house could hear Sugar's nails clicking on the flooring.
Each of these instances brought nothing but peace with them. Were they out of the ordinary? Absolutely. But perhaps because of that small bit of remembrance, they were nothing but comforting. And the same extends to dreams. I don't often dream of relatives that have passed, but when I do the feeling is the personification of the word bittersweet. I've dreamed of my great aunt, great uncle, my grandmother. The list goes on.
And while on one hand they seemed perfectly ordinary, on the other, these dreams were essentially a punch in the stomach, as after waking, I knew that they were once again gone from my life. Yet, as we all know, these types of experiences are in the vast minority. The paranormal leaves us uneasy at best, and the dreams can dial this factor up. A few weeks ago, a longtime member of the Discord server wrote in our personal experiences channel a story that left me queasy. And yes, in case you were wondering, I did receive permission to retell this here.
I never ever share anything without making sure that the people involved are perfectly okay with that. I had a dream last night that was relatively uneventful. Except there was an appearance by a woman who I went to grammar school and high school with. I was surprised in my dream to cross paths with her because I didn't have a lot of interaction with her. On a whim, I Googled her at work and found out that she had died three weeks ago. I had a very uncomfortable feeling for that.
Then I remembered that about 15 years ago, I had a dream where I talked to the oldest brother of a friend with whom I had lost contact. I asked him if he had seen my friend, and he said, No, I haven't spoken to a friend in a while. He was pleasant, dressed neatly, and sipping a drink while waiting on the bar. I went down to a local watering hall the next day and inquired if anyone had seen my friend since I hadn't seen him in a while, and the dream had brought him to mind. I walked over and said, No, I haven't seen him. But you know his brother died two nights ago, right? I was speechless.
I had the same very uncomfortable feeling. And something else. And I the dream that either of them look straight in the face or make eye contact. They both seemed slightly artificial, yet instantly recognizable as these two distinct people. I have to admit that it's a little unnerving. I was not left with a good feeling. In fact, my thoughts on this leave me shocked. It's almost like their souls were animated. I don't want to dwell on this.
I know I have spoken about this before, but this puts me in mind of a series of videos I came across on TikTok that spoke about people who have the ability to lucid dream, asking those around them either what time it is or what day or year it is. In fact, I ran across another uh one talking about the same phenomenon a week back and posted it to our Discord server. And the stories have a shocking amount of similarity to them. The person will be in a happy dream, realize this dreaming state, and then ask whoever is with them that question. And that's when happy turns into hate filled and dread.
Now, I cannot lucid dream to save my life. Even when my dreaming mind picks up on oddities that make zero sense, I just accept it as a given and move on with whatever activities I may have been performing. But if you have ever experienced something similar to what the Discord member wrote of, or about asking the time in a dream, I'd love to hear from you. Please go to Southern Demonology.com and click on either the listener inbox or contact page, or join our Discord server. This Wednesday we'll be resuming free movie night at 10 p.m. Eastern time. So feel free to drop on by.
Okay, with all of that out of the way. Next week's episode will delve into more scholarly topics. But for this week, I wanted to address some more horror and industry related topics due to their pertinence. First, let's go to the horror streaming service that should be my first and only love, but somehow cannot seem to do a dang thing right. And that is wait for it. Can you guess? Shudder. On last Friday, I get an email saying that they are once again raising prices to $6.99 a month. Why? Dear Lord, why?
There was no explanation or apology, only a terse line on when the new price would kick into effect. I know that they have entered into the field of producing their own content. But outside of a few gems such as the creep show TV series, Terrified, We Go On, and Anything for Jackson, this has been a near universal flop. If they had focused on being the U.S. distributor for quality films, such as when they did for the phenomenal horror comedy One Cut of the Dead, then they might have a viable business model.
Or if they instituted rigorous quality control for their originals, but instead they take the shotgun approach of just producing anything and everything that crumbs across their table. Well, I'm sorry, but if you have burnt me 18 out of 20 times and the last two wins came so.
Long ago that I can't remember the last time I willingly launched your service without grimacing, then you have done nothing to deserve any, nevertheless, extra money per month. I have never been so quick to cancel anything in my life. And uh the timing of it all. You do this during the writer's and actors' strike, I think that's what truly pissed me off more than anything. Quick aside, I decided to post about this on threads, and I was looking to generate an image to go along with my commentary for what it is. Do you know that an AI image generator cannot spell worth a damn?
I put in, quote, the word shudder sinking into the ocean, unquote. And every single time the word shudder was transformed into some meaningless combination of consonants and vowels. Yeah, the sh would be there. And shockingly, sometimes the s would actually look just like the logo itself. But then the rest of it would go U U D U L Y R. I finally found something that came kind of close, but even that was just mangled. And I tried quite a few of them out there. I mean, we know that foundational models already can't come up with facts. They most certainly cannot do math.
And now we can just add basic spelling and grammar into the mix as well. Good job. But rather than continuing to beat up on Shudder, let's talk about a newish horror movie that I finally got to see. Evil Dead Rides. And I actually had some hope from it. Just from the intro. A group of teens are at a remote cabin hearkening back to the series' roots. And after some slaughtering, the demon in question is depicted as levitating above a lake while the title of the film appears over the horizon. And I will be honest, that was awesome.
That alone made me think, well, maybe the criticism I've heard weren't really justified. Because if it's like this, then holy crap, we're in for a good time. Alas, that was to be for naught. There are so many things wrong with the film that that one particular scene remained the highlight. Now, I will be fair, while it wasn't the blatant cast grab that I feared this movie was going to be, they actually attempted to lay the groundwork of lore and concepts that future iterations could benefit from. It was still a huge disappointment. And here's a few reasons why.
The first is that it tries to have its cake and eat it too. And that just does not work. Let's think about the Evil Death series as a whole. The first one was a campy horror movie that took the whole teens getting slaughtered in the woods and really amped it up. The second one came along, looked at its predecessor, and said to itself, You know what that was missing? By God, more camp. And that is exactly what it did. It doubled and tripled down on that. And that made the movie glorious. Heck, even the movie poster was amazing.
I remember that one of my best friends growing up lived way back off the road, and the only way to get to his house was along a good quarter mile of dirt road. And I still remember biking to his house through those woods, thinking of that movie poster and scaring the ever-living hell out of myself. It was good times, good times. Army of Darkness, which was almost called Medieval Dead, which why not? Looked at his predecessor and said, hmm, still not enough camp.
Now, admittedly, it went a little too hard on that front, but any movie that produces such amazing one-liners as Shop Smart, Shop S Smart, it has to go down in history for something positive. And the TV series, it actually took all of that camp, turned it into a coherent, long-lasting plot while keeping the silliness, and kicked major butt while doing so. In case I haven't telegraphed my point clearly enough by this point, Evil Dead Rise forgot the camp, the one defining feature of the entire bloody series.
However, it kept most of the other nonsensical and jumble plot points that the originals didn't have to worry about because they were camp. And the fact that they were plot points that the entire Godzilla family could walk through shoulder to shoulder without any discomfort at all is what leads us to point number two. The nonsensical instantly broke whatever immersion the film had going for it. If you don't want any spoilers at all, even minor ones, then skip ahead by 10 seconds. But I'm going to call one thing out that killed me, and that's the stairs.
Because the book was found, that suddenly means that the stairs are just magically teleported away. I called bullshit at many times during this movie, but that got me especially. Not even to mention the fact that they're still used at the very end. What? And let's go on to reason number three. And that's continuing on with the visuals depicted in the Necronomicon. This book is supposed to be Sumerian. Now, admittedly, that was chosen because the vast majority of people have no idea what the Sumerians were. But you can't just cast crap against a wall hoping that people don't know.
And I'm looking at you for the same exact egregious sin, ladies. Ghostbusters movie. But if you are removing the camp and attempting to add in some legitimate lore, then you cannot keep the visuals of the book the way they have always been depicted, because no one had art styles that advanced until centuries later. Period. To my knowledge, the earliest realistic depictions of a human's face did not occur until the portraits of the Fayum and that decorated mummies. And the earliest that would be is 30 BCE.
And yet you're telling me that people were drawing in blood on human flesh scenes that depicted hell and things that would require someone to have 30 art degrees nowadays? Uh-uh. I'm sorry. And the last point, point number four, is that this movie wasted its one chance to shine. The one thing that has always been rather inconsistent is what it takes to permanently kill these demons. There have been some stabs in the past. Stabs. Sorry, dad joke moment. It's over now. To answer this question, but this movie, with its removal of camp, had the chance to at least seriously explore that topic.
And it slightly brushed up against it a few times. But then just decided to drop it like a hot potato. Now, Rise did the gore and the great visuals. Don't get me wrong. The look of the possessed as seen through a peephole was amazing. They even had a few callbacks to the iconic weapons that Bruce Campbell used. But it wasn't enough. When you take away the one thing that defines the series, then you no longer have a sequel in that series. You have a cheap knockoff that will be forgotten that ever existed except to torture true fans years later.
Didn't we learn this from the horrible Friday the 13th films that transplanted Jason into other locales and Camp Crystal Lake? Or my god, Highlander. Does no one remember Highlander 2 or 3? I mean you shouldn't if you do, but I'm just saying. But I don't want to leave on a negative note. And I realize that the vast majority of this episode has been nothing but negative, and I apologize for that.
If you want something different, but we'll still give you the evil dead goodness that you really should expect, then watch the episode in season three of the creep show TV series entitled Public TV of the Dead. This episode is gold. It starts off with the Necronomicon being featured on the show, reminiscent of Antiques Roadshow, and it ends with the character reminiscent of Bob Ross playing the part of Bruce Campbell. The villain gets her comeuppance, the hero, the recognition he deserves, and most of all, the evil pops up yet again after getting its butt kicked. What more can you ask for?
Yes, it's a very simple formula, but when you do that well, you have taken art and transformed it into something magical. Trust me, you will thank me later. That is, unless you have already cancelled Shudder. 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 feedbacks that you may have. As always, I am JJ and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.
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