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Hello, my spookies.
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It's your old buddy Enrique Couto here, and I have
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a special guest and I would say a brand new
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friend of the show. I think you guys are going
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to get a real kick out of all the insights
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she's bringing. We'll call this a Folklore Friday kind of
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deal because we're going to be talking about folklore and
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especially folklore that has kind of a deeper dive, something
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you might not find just by Googling or what have you.
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So I'm joined by D.L. Wainwright.
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She is the author of the Hollow Sun series with
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a very strong background in folklore and religions, having studied them.
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What would you say it's safe to say most of
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your life? Oh, well, yes.
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And my degree is in world religions and religious studies.
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Yep.
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Yes.
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And it's fascinating because the religion versus folklore thing. I mean,
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it's kind of like religion versus cult. It's based on
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how widespread is it, how much real estate is involved,
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as to when something becomes a religion versus stays folklore,
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for instance.
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That's an interesting way of putting it, how much real
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estate it has. I mean, because a lot of folklore is, yeah,
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very local. And a lot of folklore, things that we
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call folklore now, were part of a religion previously. And
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they might have been like, Kind of sort of suppressed
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or changed and stuff as like Christianity spread and stuff.
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And so then these things that used to be the
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local deities and things now just become sort of lesser
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entities and just part of a local superstition.
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Yeah. Cause I always like to, I like to think,
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I like to have fun, you know?
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So I like to think as a treat to myself,
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like what if, what if like, let's use one that
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everybody knows to some extent, like what if Krampus, what
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if the people who first started believing in Krampus, like
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for fun or for, you know, celebration purposes, what if
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there was a famine and for some reason, the people
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who were really into celebrating Krampuschnacht ended up surviving the
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famine and And then it became like, no, we celebrate
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Krampusnacht like we do. And then you get like 500
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years and now it's like a religion. Because, you know,
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it just happenstance pushed it to be like, no, no,
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this is why we all lived. We keep doing it.
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We keep doing it. Like, that's kind of how a
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lot of faiths seem to happen.
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But honestly, you actually got Krampus backwards because Krampus probably
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was a local nature deity.
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Oh, yeah.
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So it was probably celebrated as some type of actual
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god-like kind of figure, but not like the actual god. Yeah.
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And stuff.
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And then, you know, a lot of times people don't
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want to give up their cool traditions whenever the Christianity
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comes in and tries to erase everything. And so Christians
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have to make some Sort of trade-offs. Some would be like, okay, fine,
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you can keep your Krampus, but we've got to make
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it somehow Christian.
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Well, and Krampus and a lot of those are really,
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it's extra fascinating because they're always from like, when they're
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from like the Alps and stuff, really hard places to
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live too. Where the stories are basically like, if you
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don't do your chores and you don't gather up the food,
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you die. He comes and kills you. Because it's like
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a child understands much better. A guy comes and kills you.
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Then you will slowly starve. We will starve.
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We will freeze. A kid's like, duh. But then you're like, monster,
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eat shit. They're like, ah. You know, it's a fascinating element.
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That's actually touching on a very common thing in folklore.
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A lot of like the spooky things in the folklores
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are sort of cautionary tales and stuff like that's why.
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Pretty much every single culture around the world has some
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type of creepy water monster that will drown you and
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kill you if you go swimming in it as a
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child and stuff. Because it's to keep kids from going
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unsupervised around water.
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Because it's like, no, don't go there.
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Because there's going to be this, that, or the other
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that's going to just pull you down under and stuff.
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Or don't wander out in the woods because this or
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that and stuff will be there. So it's just things
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to scare kids into not doing things that will get
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them killed.
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You're talking to a kid who grew up and his
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boogeyman was La Llorona. Like that was my boogeyman. So no,
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and that was, we lived in a, in a tenement building.
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Like we lived in a very unsafe area and I was, my,
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my stepdad told that story so well.
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Oh.
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With so many perfectly evil lies.
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For a child, you know, to hear the version he
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told La Llorona had two boys. Cause I was a
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little boy. And I was the only boy, little boy
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in the house. You know, he kept telling me about
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the stream behind our apartment building. Years later, I found
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out there was not even a stream there. There was
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not even a stream.
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He just made it up.
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Yeah. Yeah. To scare me more, you know?
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And, and, and then this whole element of like, you know, you'll, you'll,
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if you leave your bedroom and you walk around at night, you'll,
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you'll hear, you'll hear beautiful singing and you'll, you'll be
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so drawn to it.
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You'll want to know. who's singing so beautifully? What is
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the tune? And then you'll leave and you'll go to
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the stream and that's when you'll see a lady there.
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And by the time you see her face, it's too late.
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You realize she's weeping. She's weeping, Ricky. And then she
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gets you too. And I'm just laying in bed like,
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oh my God. So I'm like five years old sitting
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in bed going, do I just pee in here? Do
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I just pee the bed? Because I don't want to die.
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I don't want this monster to get me. I think
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you did it too well. Yeah, that's too well.
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And I think you just kind of made me realize,
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I think my older siblings created a folklore monster for me.
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They said if I didn't brush my teeth, the cavity
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man would crawl in through my window in the middle
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of the night and drill holes in my teeth, and
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that haunted me. my entire childhood scary that yeah like
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you should picture of like this yeah.
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You should write a creepy pasta like as soon as
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we're as soon as we're done you should write that
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creepy pasta before somebody else does it because that is
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a the cavity man well first of all that sounds
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extra scary when you're an adult too you're like what
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what what That has a lot of meanings. But the
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idea like he drills your teeth while you're asleep is
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frigging mortifying.
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It was mostly like the crawling through my window part
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that I think always like creeped me out and stuff.
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Because we, yeah, even though we lived in Florida, we
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didn't have air conditioning.
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So I always had my windows open.
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Of course.
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So that would make it even easier for him just
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to crawl in.
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Of course, yeah.
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He's able to drill holes in my teeth.
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Drill those teeth.
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Well and that's that's an interesting thing like as as
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somebody who's looked into folklore a lot like deeply do
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you find it wild how the internet is so into
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lore like it's their favorite thing even if it's you
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know all made.
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Up yeah well no i actually i i do find
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that fascinating because it just shows that uh humans are
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always still coming up with their own folklore like I'm
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fascinated by things like Slender Man and stuff. We know
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we can trace back to where it was invented, like
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on that something awful thread and stuff. And you can
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see the inception of this, this creation of this concept,
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but it has just grown and evolved and become its
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own thing. And like, you know, back rooms and all
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those other things, like we just keep coming up with
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new folklore that becomes part of our culture and stuff.
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And I just, I, I, Just think that's fascinating and
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a really cool glimpse into like human nature.
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Yeah.
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It's like we just we just crave that.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And I love that we're at a point where we
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don't even mind knowing it's fiction.
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Yeah.
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It's just that we love this idea because it was
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kind of missing. you know, this, this idea that, you know,
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here's this thing and here are the rules and here's why. And,
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and all these things, cause that was the kind of
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stuff you would, you know, whisper about. Like when I
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was a kid, I feel like our folklore were kind
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of the, the most urban legend, the.
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Urban legends, you know, can thing on the door.
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Yeah.
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Or even, or even the more like devious ones, like, um,
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you know, like, uh, Was it the flashier high beams,
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you know, because there's a gang initiation?
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Oh, gosh, yeah.
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I remember that. There were so many. So many of them.
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And some of them would kind of like the vanishing hitchhiker.
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That one, you could trace it back super far. There's
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so many interesting stories about it. As long as there
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has been a way to hitch a ride, there have
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been people who hitch a ride and vanish.
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Yes.
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But then you look at gang initiation, and that's a
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very clear fear of urban change and playing on those fears.
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Because it was always like your aunt or somebody would
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just share that because they thought they were protecting you.
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So you have all these elements of folklore kind of
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bleeding into modern life where we kind of feel, especially
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I feel like back then, we kind of felt like
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we were above it. But then all of a sudden,
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you know, the chain letters would circulate no problemo.
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Oh my goodness.
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Yeah. And I had like, I had a coworker once
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who got like a chain letter email thing and was like,
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should I, should I send it? Because this says that
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the person who didn't before her like died.
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And I'm like, that's fake. It's all me. But she
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was so.
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Concerned and stuff because yeah, it gets, it taps into,
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I think our like, our brains and like that little
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imagination thing. But what if it's real? Like, I know
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it's probably not, but what if?
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Yeah.
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Like, and yeah.
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And what if is, is everything, especially because what you're
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talking about at the end of the day, imagination and
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imagination is all what if all the time. This is
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why I've, you know, put myself through seven years of
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weekly spooky, uh, telling scary stories, but then sharing, you know,
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true crime, but like in folklore, because when I first
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launched the show, we had what I call the flagship,
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which was the Wednesday Weekly Spooky, which is a narrated
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short story. Oh, cool.
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And that was the beginning. That was the impetus for
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the first hundred weeks. That was all we did.
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And as the show started to expand, I started doing
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what I called Terrifying and True, which is Mondays, which
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it was true crime and folklore, things like that. Things
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that people have believed was true or still believe is true.
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You know, that was kind of the rule of it.
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And the reason I made it folklore and true crime
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is I am a sweet summer child, and I get
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really depressed if all I talk about is true crime.
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I am not an adorable little white lady who can
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handle all that murder. I am a grown 40-year-old man
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with muscles, and it makes me sad, and I don't
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like only talking about that.
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No, I'm with you. So my day job is in logistics,
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and I will sit there and I'll be listening to
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documentary things. And if I'm listening to too many of
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the true crime ones back to back, I'm just like,
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why are people so mean?
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I need.
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To listen to something happier now. And my other co-workers
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are like, why are you such a little kid about it?
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I'm like, because it's.
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Yeah yeah it's it but i but and i get
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the entertainment value obviously because i still do them and
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uh the impetus really is you know to to bring
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interesting things to light but the folklore part would always