Monthly Spooky | Horrifying Christmas Origins, Video Games that KILL and Bigfoot Wants a Friend!

Conversation transcript for the November 2022 episode, recovered from its released recording using automatic speech recognition. Separate opening appeals and closing promotional segments are omitted. Automated punctuation restoration was checked to preserve the words. Speaker names are not assigned where turns are uncertain. Not checked word for word by a human against the audio; transcription errors may remain. Dates and references reflect the original recording.

Thanksgiving is over. Now it's time to celebrate happy horror days as we delve into the real stories that are often morbid behind so many holiday traditions, plus a Christmas gift that kills you on purpose. Get comfortable. Turn off the lights. It's Monthly Spooky. Hello everyone and welcome to Monthly Spooky. It's that time of the month again. Oh, I did not. That was not thought out as I said that out loud.

No. It's that time of the month again. I'm, of course, Henrique Couto. You probably maybe know me, who knows. And I'm joined as always by my good friend, Michelle. Michelle, how are you? I don't know. You're like, I was good until you mentioned time of the month. Yeah. Thanks. Well, well, uh, first of all, we just had Thanksgiving just happened. It was just happened.

American Thanksgiving, you know, how was your Thanksgiving, Michelle? I guess it was fine. I need to mention Michelle does not believe in being thankful. Yeah. So she doesn't enjoy Thanksgiving very much If there was like a sorry-giving I would do that I could see that What would you serve at a sorry-giving dinner? I don't know, but I would be upset about it.

Well, Michelle and I, We differ on Thanksgiving And I think the biggest reason It's not actually just because she's unthankful, Although she is, uh, no, it's because I have like a deep-seated love of the food and Michelle does not. That's definitely one of the reasons. Yeah, so like I love turkey. Well, I don't love turkey all the time. I love turkey for thanksgiving.

Turkey is, generally speaking, the lesser poultry in my opinion to chicken, but I do enjoy turkey once or twice a year. So I like the turkey, I like the cranberries, I like the stuffing, I like the mashed potatoes, I like, uh, we, we do deviled eggs, we do. You know stuff like that. What you made a face. You don't like deviled eggs.

No, I don't like deviled eggs. That's hateful man. How can you not like deviled eggs? Because you don't? I really don't like them. Okay, that's fine, I mean you're, you're allowed to have the wrong opinion, thank you. But was it an okay holiday, other than the food upsetting you? I mean it was fine, you know, I, I just get depressed around the holidays, yeah, and when I see my, my extended family and stuff, is it?

Is it because they're all like really happy it. I mean, I don't know if they're happy, but they, they definitely have things together in a different way than I have things together, so. So it's a little bit like I don't have to think about all that stuff all the time. Yeah, see, I'm lucky. As time progresses, time has been kind to me, like I was the absolute train wreck loser of the family and then, as time has gone on, I've slowly but surely become the successful small business owner of the family.

Yeah, it's pretty nice. It's pretty nice. Well, I had a pretty good thanksgiving: ate lots of food, uh, spent a lot of time with some good people. Uh, watch planes, trains and automobiles in Dutch, which is very important. Wow. Did you watch planes, trains and automobiles? Yeah, actually I did. You did? When? Uh, Wednesday night. Yeah. That makes me so happy. I'm glad it was totally accidental.

It happened to be on AMC and I was like, okay. So you gotta, you gotta, what was the, the scene where he swears at that woman at the rental car, like on TV? Was it just like, do you remember? I think they just kind of cut the curses out. Now I don't remember. I want a car right now. Dodson and Buick. That scene has so much swearing.

It's like hard. Oh, I guess I could have used the mute button. I want a Dodson. I want a Buick. Anyway, I'm glad you watched that. You know how much that movie means to me. So, yeah, I know, because sent you a copy one year, didn't I? Yeah, it's on your show. Most of Michelle's movie collection are movies that I was like, oh you haven't seen this, you have to.

And then I mail her a copy and, yeah, that's yeah she, and she's uncomfortable about it every single time I do it. Yeah, so so we'll talk more about thanksgiving and things like that, including- and this is a tease- Michelle's thoughts on the quintessential thanksgiving horror film, blood rage, which we watch together. Yeah, but first, um, how do you feel about the crypt?

I've been working really hard, even over the holidays, and I feel, I feel like it's coming together. What do you think I like? I like the bleeding wall I put in last time. I still think that was a good investment. It has broken three times. I mean, it's hard to get them to. It's a, it's a money pit, you can just say it.

I mean, it's like any sort of liquid kind of feature is always a problem to maintain. Yeah. No, it's constantly breaking and the blood started turning pink. That's okay. I mean. Don't look at it. Okay. I intentionally didn't point any lights in that direction of the room. Then why did you point it out? Because I'm in too deep. It's like having a bad haircut.

I have no option but to defend it now because it's mine for a while or like living in New York City. I have no option but to defend it no matter how terrible it is. So it's it's what's happening. It's not that bad, though. Thank you. Well, so do you like this? I don't know. Would you call it like a it's like a skeleton turkey.

That's what I wanted to put up to be festive. Yeah, I think it's kind of cool. I got it on Etsy, of course. And it's very, very medieval looking, which I guess doesn't make sense, because that would have been way before thanksgiving, way before the pilgrims. Also, there were no turkeys in medieval times. You don't know that. I thought turkeys were an american thing.

Well, yeah, I guess medieval america isn't quite the same. Not quite. Yeah, close, but not quite. Um, well, I'm glad you like it. I'm I'm going to get this place decked out for Christmas. We actually won't be on the air again before Christmas because we come at the last Monday of the month. So we'll be on just after Christmas to talk about the holiday.

So I figured we'll talk a bit about Christmas today. Okay. So I have some, our main topic for today will be the dark origins of Christmas traditions and more so the ghost stories of Christmas holidays, how that became a tradition. So, but before that, I want to mention to you fine people listening, Michelle and I both have had quite a month when it comes to heating issues.

I need a new furnace and it sucks. It really, really sucks. I'm getting a new furnace put in and Michelle had the joy of being woken up by a CO2 monitor twice. Yeah. Two times in two days, basically. Yeah. She is fine. She did not inhale too much carbon monoxide. Just the right amount. Just the perfect amount for a great night's sleep.

Yeah. No, it didn't really. But your problem is hopefully fixed now. We'll see. Well, at least we will see because, you know, the alarms clearly work. Yeah, they do. You know, I never really believed that they work. So I'm always really surprised when they do. It's like, this thing will save your life. It doesn't work. Yeah. Just to pacify you. Exactly. It's like, oh yeah, this will wake you up instead of letting you die.

On my end, I did have carbon monoxide issues, but not enough to set off anything. It's just the fact that my furnace is old enough. My furnace voted in the midterms. Like, that's how old my furnace is. Like my furnace is getting letters, you know, trying to get him recruited to the Marines. Like that's my furnace is 18 years old. Like my furnace used to be able to buy cigarettes.

Like anyway. So, yeah, I, uh, so I guess my point is if you love what I do and you want to help with the furnace issues, why not go to Weekly Spooky.com, click on Patreon and support the show. We're at 95 Patreon backers. Wow, yeah, and the goal was a hundred by the end of the year. So, for real, if you're out there and you're debating it, maybe now's the time to pull the trigger.

As little as one dollar a month gets you bonus shows and stuff like that and, more importantly, you'll know you'll be able to enjoy my recordings without hearing me shiver and then inevitably die. So winters can be a little brutal here, so you know you gotta be ready for that, yeah, but but anyway, Michelle, I think we've we bs too much. It's about time we get to the spooky news, the spooky news.

So, Michelle, Christmas is coming right up and I think I found the perfect gift. Yeah, uh, for you. Oh, this is. This is a story from independent.co.uk. Oculus creator makes virtual reality headset that intentionally kills people. Nerve gear can explode its wearer's brain, Palmer Lucky says. This one, I've seen this story going around a lot and the moment I read it I was like, well that belongs on Weekly Spooky.

Or Monthly Spooky. You know what? I have too many shows. So leave me alone. I am tired of your judgment. So, all right, here we go. Sorry, the uh the independent was like, hey, we're giving you an ad instead of the rest of the article, and I was like, oh, thanks, thanks. So, uh, this says: uh, palmer lucky, the creator of oculus, has created a virtual reality headset that intentionally kills people, named nerve gear.

The system aims to closely tie people's virtual life to their real one by bringing them both to an end at the same time. I like what I can explain. You can explain, I can explain. Do you want to finish before I explain? Well, I'll go on and you, you chime in as necessary. I'll explain once you've told us. Okay, if someone dies in a virtual reality game or experience while wearing the headset, then they will be killed in real life at the same time.

Mr lucky said: I mean, I know, you know what. That's a good point, though. Like when I'm playing grand theft auto 5, I'm like man. I was so immersed until I died and actually lived. Yeah, yeah, I want to die. When I die in the game, it makes it more like the situation's dire and you gotta succeed. Yeah, it's like real life, where you can't do stupid things because you'll die, yeah, and it's.

It's way better than that lame other idea where, if you die in a game, they make you wait a day to play it again. Yeah, yeah, that's not enough. Yeah, yeah, that's not gonna make your mama cry, come on. It does so by detecting the specific shade of red that shows when a person dies, meaning that developers could easily integrate the system.

Oh, thank goodness, it'll. It'll detect the, so it'll work with any game where you die. That's great. I want to. I want to play this. I want to play tetris with this on. Oh, that'd be terrifying. I think anything would be terrifying. Tetris, though, really, because I just you're gonna die like you're not gonna. You don't, you don't win you, yeah, you always lose.

It's just how long do you hold on? I, I, the rest of your life, that short amount of time. Um, it does so by detecting, oh yes. Once that red shows three explosive modules detonate quote, instantly destroying the brain of the user. I like that because most video games gradually destroy the brain of the user. You know, uh, Mr. Lucky. I love the name of the lucky Mr.

Lucky said that the system is still unfinished. He aims to make it impossible to remove or destroy the headset so that people would be stuck inside virtual reality. I'm pretty sure I've seen multiple Japanese movies about this. Yeah, I will tell you when you're done. I will explain this to you. What I don't understand is like if this is because I've not read the article.

I wanted to react to it. But if this is some kind of like a art piece or like a, you know they're just trying to make a point or something I would just, like you know, be like. You have to sit in this chair and it has a gun pointed at it with a string on the trigger. Like, like why go to all the effort of creating like a brand new way to kill someone, which is honestly very similar to killing cattle.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know I'm not. I'll just I'll just tell you about it when you're finished. This reminds me of a movie. I'm trying to remember which movie it was where an artist made an art piece that is a chair with a shotgun pointed at it with a timer on the trigger that you can't read. And they have a video camera pointing to the at the chair.

And the way you experience the art is you sit in the chair and look at yourself on the TV knowing that it could it probably won't but it could go off. And that's art. Okay, okay, and because of the limitations of the design and the danger that it could fail and kill people at the wrong time, it probably won't kill people at the wrong time.

I love that, though the danger that it could fail and kill people at the wrong time, because then you'll be dying like ah, bullcrap, yeah, like you're still playing the game. I didn't even I made that jump he's. He has still yet to try it out. So no, you don't say he has still yet to try it out on himself. I feel like that's.

You know, beta testing. This is not gonna be the ideal. Yep, yep. I have so many things to say that I'm not saying okay, oh man, it's gonna turn out. Michelle's wearing it right now. Yeah. Mr. Lucky said that while the technology at the moment is quote, just a piece of office art intending to be thought provoking about game design. He has also said that it seems to be the first time such a system has been created quote, and it won't be the last.

Oh, bullshit. What Michelle, why are you swearing? I'm sorry. I forgot. I'm not allowed to swear on the show. you're talking about something that is very important to me. So I got excited in the last four episodes. I was the one that accidentally swore. So you win, you win. Um, quote, the idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me.

You instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it. Mr. Lucky wrote in the blog post, announcing the nerve gear pumped up graphics. Might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game.

This is an area of video game mechanics that has never been explored, despite the long history of real world sports involved revolving around similar stakes. What real world are we talking about? Like like playing russian roulette, I guess yeah, because, like I mean, I, I get. I get. Like, yeah, you play football, you get concussions. It's really bad. What were you going to say?

I'm sorry. What about when you have a duel with someone? That's not a sport. Maybe that is a sport. I don't know if it's a sport. I mean, it's not a sport anymore because it's illegal now, but it used to be allowed. Yeah. And then they were like, we can't do it anymore. I just think Mr. Lucky should just say, I really feel like we missed out as a planet on video games coming about after the Nazis fell.

So we didn't get... Dr. Mangala would be like, it makes the game so much more thrilling. I don't know why he sounds like that and not like in German. But like, because this is real world sports sports revolving around similar stakes. I forgot that like you do the high jump and if you mess it up, they shoot you in the head, in the head.

Yeah. I mean, though you can accidentally kill yourself doing sports. So maybe it's the same thing. You can accidentally kill yourself doing a lot of things. Yeah. But all I'm saying is I don't know if I want to play goat simulator on this thing. Yeah, um, the technology was created to commemorate the events of the anime sword. Oh, now I know why.

Michelle knows stuff about. This was created to commemorate the events of the anime sword art online and was announced on the date. A similar fictional technology is created in that game and the name of the equipment is taken from that. In sao, players are put into a virtual dungeon and must fight their way out. But if they are unsuccessful, they die in real life.

Mr. Lucky is most famous for creating Oculus, the virtual reality company and its early headsets. The company was bought by Meta, then Facebook in 2014 and the two have gradually integrated. He left the company in 2017 amid criticisms of his pro Trump political views, though Facebook has always denied that that was the reason for Mr. Mr. Lucky was fired. I mean, pro-Trump anime fan adds up to me.

Since then, Mr. Lucky has been continuing his interest, we'll call it that, interest in virtual reality, but also focusing on defense technologies. Okay. In his blog post, Mr. Lucky mentioned that NerveGear was built using explosive charge modules I usually use for a different project, which may be related to that work. Okay, so Michelle, let loose. Okay, so I'm sure that there were at least one person also listening to this right now, and they're going like, Sword Art Online, like, in the entire thing.

So, yeah, I mean, I believe that in the anime slash light novel, yeah, Nerve Gear was released this year in 2022. So there was a bunch of stuff on Twitter where people were pretending it was happening in real time and like that, like they're. They were, like you know, talking about how everyone got stuck in the game because what happened was it was made and beta tested, as you said, and it worked.

But oh good, when they released it, like it wasn't, I guess it was done, but like the creator was insane. You don't say yeah, so like everybody went in like oh, it's just gonna be, because it was like a full, it's like a full dive virtual reality thing. So you're like totally in the game and yeah, but like a vr, mmo, um and uh and so, uh.

So the creator was like I don't think I'm gonna let any of you guys out, so like you can't get out, there's no exit anymore. Like in the menu, it's gone. And he's like you gotta finish the game and if you don't finish the game, um, and you get killed, you die in real life. And they're in there for like months. So their bodies are deteriorating in the real world.

It's cool. I like the first season, even though it isn't super great. But it, you know. I know what I'm getting you for Christmas. No, don't get me nerve gear. I do want to beta test some sort of full dive. I mean, I don't know. I would die if I got trapped in a game. It's not going to work. I think we all would.

I like that. For a second, I thought you were going to be like, no, don't spend money on me. It wasn't going to be, no, don't get me the thing that kills me. It was just like, no, don't spend money. Please don't spend money on me. Real quick, this is a perfect segue. Michelle, you just launched your own podcast. Yeah, I did.

Do you want to tell people about it? I don't know. It's a podcast about anime. It's called Michelle, explains anime poorly and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. It's available everywhere. Uh, as of recording this, there are two episodes published right now. Yeah, so if you like, uh, a roughly 25 to 30 minute recap of anime, you should really check it out, I guess.

I mean, um, I'm trying to catch up, like, where we like there's more than a Michelle I'm I'm watching and uh, describing chainsaw man right now. So, uh, trying to catch up to where we are. Um, we're actually airing, but I I don't know if I can, which is sad, because I like really want to talk about the last episode and I I'm, I have to wait.

So I believe in you. Yeah. I mean, it's taking me like five hours or so per episode. So it's at least so. That's a lot. I'm sorry. It's okay. I'm just not good at this. You're, you're getting used to it. That's the big thing. You've never made your own podcast. So you're, you're still getting your grip, but I'm serious, guys. I've listened to the first two episodes.

Michelle's very entertaining. I always say, well, you're interested. That's why I have you on the show, because I find you incredibly entertaining. So please check out. Michelle explains anime poorly. If you enjoy anime and want to hear some musings and such and uh, help Michelle, have some friends to talk about anime with. So I wanted to plug that at the beginning and then it slipped my mind when we were talking about dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.

So yeah, but we have another story. This one's from mirror.co. Uk, aka the place with all the ghost stories. My god, they publish constant, constant ghost stories. This one says: landlord of haunted pub, creeped out as ghost of drowned teen, pushes pint off table. I mean, that sounds like you know just an average day, right? They better actually see the ghost, Otherwise I'm going to be annoyed because there's no way you'd know it was a drowned teen.

A landlord of a haunted pub, haunted was in quotes, has been left feeling unsettled after he watched a pint glass get pushed off a table and smash without anyone touching it. Which paranormal investigators believe is the work of a teenage ghost? Are we just adding ghost to things now? Because it used to be like anytime anything bad happened, we think it was teenagers.

Now it's like, we think it was teenage ghosts. Makes sense. Scott Dawson caught the creepy footage on his closed circuit television camera at the Ringo Bell's pub in Kendall Cumbria just before 8.30 p.m. on June 29th and claimed it isn't the first spooky incident to have taken place in the pub. The bizarre footage shows a punter ordering two pints at the bar and placing one on a table while he takes his dog outside.

Once no one is looking, the pint glass seems to move toward the edge of the table on its own before startling customers as it smashes on a chair. It smashed on a chair. That's kind of weird. Um, it's good too, because closed circuit tv you could never see. You know a fishing wire or anything. Um, I mean, also I'd have to see it because, you know, there could be lots of condensation.

So it could have just kind of slid because of that, depending on the angle of the bar, obviously. Yeah. And it's, it's made in England. So the place is probably not level, you know, just cause nobody cared. Cause they built it in like, you know, 14, 15. They were level when they built them, but they didn't compact the ground enough. So then they settled.

Fair enough. Scott, who became landlord of the pub in December of 2021, insisted the weird scenes aren't the only unexplained thing to have happened in the pub either, as numerous pints have moved on their own and the cellar has developed a reputation for being creepy. People are scared of basements for some reason. Because they're underground and that's where you go when you're dead.

That's why it's scary. Oh, I just think they're cozy. So I've been in some pretty cozy basements. Yeah. But they're the finished kind. No, my basement is cozy. Your basement is like a kind of basement because it has a door to the outside world. Yeah, but yeah. You're on a slope. So that's, I mean, you get kind of the best of both worlds.

I guess. It's kind of like my mother's house is a split level. So it's like, the first floor is kind of a basement, but not exactly. Yeah. It's weird. So anyway, basements are good. I don't have a basement so I believe that they're unnecessary. Gaudy, and anyone who has one is just trying to show off and hurt my feelings. So, um, the 43 year old believes there's a good chance.

The establishment is haunted and has even had paranormal investigators- take a look at the area- who have claimed there's a ghost of a 17-year-old boy named Edward who hangs out in the cellar because he died after drowning in a well on the property. Okay. Scott, who is originally from Manchester, well there, that tells you everything, Manchester, said, I live here and for the first couple of weeks I could hardly sleep.

It was very creepy. There's a lot of strange goings on. My view is there's definitely a good chance this place is haunted. I wonder if it brings a lot of people. You know the place being haunted. I mean I don't know. I figured everything is haunted in england. Yeah, that makes sense. I agree, though, like the idea like that a glass, would you know, slide because of wet condensation and stuff.

I've had that happen at restaurants before. Your glass just kind of moves a little bit. Yeah, um, the glass was sat on the table for a good while before it moved. There was nothing to trigger the movement. If it's as if there's a presence there, that makes it even worse, because condensation takes a while. Yeah, there's been other occasions in that corner where we've had pints moving on the table and tipping over.

Okay, so it's just uneven. Then maybe or maybe there is a ghost that likes that corner. Yeah, it's like I. This is my corner, you know how it is like I like certain places. I have favorite places to sit. It's the same thing. Oh, okay. I get that. There's been other occasions in that corner where we've had pites moving on the table and tipping over.

I've even swapped the table round and it still seems to happen. So it's not the table itself, but it's definitely in that spot. Normally the guys what the normally the guys one of these people that can what you guys need copy editors as I use their their content for free. Normally the guy's one of these people that can explain away something like that, but he watched the footage back and was flabbergasted.

He didn't believe in anything strange or paranormal, but he does now. Oh, the landlord also said the pub, which was established in 1741 has been a hotspot for mediums and paranormal investigators for years with many of them drawn to the cellar room downstairs. Yeah, sellers are creepy, I don't know. Oh, wow, there's a picture of the seller. It is very creepy, it's not and I can't see it.

Why would I let you see it? You'll just say it's cute. Yeah, it's, because it is. It's one of those really old, like, like very stone built sellers. Yay, yeah, it's a stone foundation. It looks very wet. They get wet. Yeah, he added: one of the creepiest parts of this pub is that we have a cellar and there's a big square section that looks like a room but it's filled in.

What does that even mean? There's space at the front and back, but this big square is filled in. It's just seems really strange. I guess he's trying to say there's like rooms that are filled in with cement, like part of it has a slab foundation or something, I don't know. That's all he said. I don't think. I don't think that's weird or scary.

You know, for people who invented the english language, I'm having trouble following them. Uh, quote: the mediums that visited us reckon there's a well in there and they said one of the entities who walks around the pub, a young lad called edward, was pushed down. A well, if you believe the mediums, and there is a young lad named edward here, then it would make sense that a 17 year old boy might find it quite funny to wind people up and have a bit of fun.

Yeah, that's why I think when I think of 17 year old kid, he's, that's what he's gonna be doing, you know, pushing stuff, pushing beers over. He's not gonna like, has he been goosing any of the women? Like are pulling up skirts or anything. That sounds more like a 17 year old ghost just saying: well, what else is he gonna do? I don't know.

Try to drink the beer. I mean, that would be the next step, I suppose. Yeah, I, maybe they just have a ghost that's a cat, because that sounds like a cat that does- and- and this next quote makes me think of a cat too. The quote is: it is creepy, but there's nothing nasty in here. I think he's just playful. Yeah, it sounds like a cat.

You got a ghost cat or just an actual cat that you guys don't see for some reason, and while some might be put off by the idea of drinking a pint next to a teenage ghost, scott has said he's actually gained patrons thanks to the ghost nights he holds and the Extra tourism he gets from visitors with a taste for the supernatural.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking when I heard he just he bought it less than a year ago. I was like, oh, weird that there's all this newsworthy ghost activity now. But I can't pretend like I'm that judgy because I'm sitting here going like, oh, they just want attention. So anyway, I'm reading the story and telling you all about it. But let's not go there.

OK, no need to hurt me. No need to hurt me. So, uh, we'll be back with more spooky news right after these quick words from our sponsors. During that break, Michelle was telling me a very funny story which you'll never hear. So, uh, but uh, I set this story aside specifically for you, Michelle. Thank you, because this story is from rmidland.com and it's about your favorite Northern Michigan man claims to be exchanging presents with Bigfoot for two years.

I know you like Bigfoot. Yeah. I'm not saying you're like obsessed with Bigfoot, but I know you enjoy Bigfoot. You appreciate Bigfoot. Okay. Wow. Michelle does not like Bigfoot and now she's going to hate her Christmas present. It's okay. I understand. Bigfoot is alive and well in northern Michigan, according to one resident who claims he has been trading handmade gifts with the creature for nearly two years.

I like that they're handmade. What do you think Bigfoot goes to the store? Well, I mean, by saying trading handmade gifts, that means both are handmade. Yeah, well... I would expect Bigfoot to make things by hand, but the other guy, he could have just went on Wish.com or something. Honestly, Bigfoot would probably be stoked. Yeah. Because I'm guessing he can't get a credit card.

I don't know. Maybe. I mean, we'd have to look into it. Casey Dostert or at Foul Mitten Outdoors on TikTok. I love how TikTok is now what news reports on almost all the time now. Yeah. Yeah. Created his page to share his love of the outdoors, but some of his most popular TikTok posts raking up thousands and sometimes millions of views include quote interactions with a suspicious creature Dostert said is Bigfoot.

He even said they have become friends. Yeah. Are you just jealous because Bigfoot hasn't become friends with you? You, I don't. I don't think Bigfoot would be friends with me, so I'm not jealous, you know, like I don't have any expectation, yeah, that people being friends with me or monsters it. It kind of sounds like you're taking this personally. If I'm being honest, I I just I don't, really.

I already don't understand what's happening. Like somebody on tiktok says that they're hanging out Bigfoot, yeah, I just totally believe them, sure, well, why would they put it on tiktok if it was a lie? Tiktok is the one place where people do not chase clout. It's true. Yeah. It's the only place. It's an oasis from clout chasers. Yeah. That's what TikTok is, friends.

For those who are elder millennials like us, that's the place for clout. Okay. So according to the videos, Dos Tert leaves small food items on a rock he's named the Gifting Rock and finds simple handicrafts left by Bigfoot in return. One TikTok user, likely spooked by the footage, wrote beneath the second video, I highly suggest carrying clear quartz with you. It will help keep anything negative from sticking to you and coming home.

Look, I... You take over, Michelle. So I don't know if courts actually prevents living beings from following you. In fact, I'm almost 100% sure that it does not. I was not ready for that. Not even a little bit. Oh my God. I just like that the first. I just like that the first comment they reference, they set it up so reasonably. Likely spooked by the footage.

And the first one's about using quartz to protect you. I mean, it's almost like I'm surprised they didn't go, with the first one being somebody saying: I don't think that's Bigfoot, I think it's the ghost of Bigfoot. You know, like that's what I was waiting on, oh, but, but not everyone is convinced by dose turds posts with one tiktok user commenting: you all know this is a big joke, right?

There's nothing funny about using quartz to protect yourself. Sir dostert is not alone in sighting a mysterious being in the dense forests of northern michigan. There have been multiple sasquatch sightings reported there, enough to create an annual upper peninsula Bigfoot convention founded by richard meyer. I am fascinated by the up, the upper peninsula of michigan. What about you? Um, I've never been there, but I like that area of the country, so it's probably great.

This January I'm going to the up, yay, because I booked. I booked a cabin like um, less than 30 miles from the upper peninsula, but it's on the lower part, but it's right, the upper peninsula is expensive. Oh, because of the- you know the transportation elements and stuff like that. I couldn't find a place for under 110 dollars to stay in the up, but in the regular michigan.

I found places so crazy, dirt cheap, because same people don't want to go to michigan at the start of January- yeah, that's exactly when I want to go to michigan. So last year I went to- um, oh gosh, where was that? Uh, I went to, I went. Well, I went to northern michigan, but I'm trying to remember the name of the place.

It was, um, it doesn't matter. Uh, thanks for nothing, uh, thanks for not helping me with that. No, but I went to like grayling. It was called grayling michigan and that's very far up the mitten, as they. They call it. But uh, but I but. So that place was like four and a half hours straight north. This new place is five hours straight north.

It's even further north, yeah, so it should be unbelievably cold. Yeah, but one of the days that I'm there, I'm going to go up to the upper peninsula and, you know, get lunch and do do a few things. You know, I just really want to see it, so I'm really excited about that. And if you haven't heard, I know you have, but if you haven't heard our thanksgiving episode of Weekly Spooky yet turkey terror.

It takes place in the up. Yeah, yeah, and that was written by douglas waltz who lives in kalamazoo, oh yay, so he is a a true michigander. Um, I will say I don't expect that this is Bigfoot. This sounds a lot more like the wendigo to me, given gifts, oh yeah, and they're not like arms of people, not yet. Oh, the wendigo is patient, oh okay.

When I last time I stayed up in michigan- that was the joke- I just I would tell people I was like I'm just outside waiting for the wendigo. I'm like just looking for it, waiting for it. So there's a part of michigan, of the upper peninsula, there's an island way, way up north and there's actually a town on the map named windigo and I want to go there.

So bad and it's really hard to get there. You have to. You have to drive all the way to the highest point of the up and then take a boat. It's not like a very developed place and during the winter it's just closed. You just can't get there. Do people get? Do they live there? I don't think anyone lives on that island.

It makes me. It makes me. I've been saying this: if I ever hit it big, if I ever make just stupid money, I'm renting that island one winter, like I'm being like: no, we're, you're opening it up, I'm going there, I'm staying in when windigo, because that sounds safe. So all right. Uh, he and others in the group claim there's plenty of evidence that a number of these fabled humanoid creatures exist in the wilds of Michigan.

For instance, Meyer said they have footprints as far as they, uh, as far as just how many there could be in the UP Meyer said, it's hard to know. He said they've had quote multiple sightings, including a family groups of anywhere from two to 10 big foots at once. Are they big foots or big feet? I don't know. I don't know. I've always wondered.

We need your help audience. Are they Bigfoots or Bigfeet? Is it 10 Bigfeet at once or 10 Bigfoots at once? I bet it's Bigfoots. It probably is. Yeah, but I like Bigfeet. I want it to be like a weird one, like Bigfooted at eye. It's Bigfooted at eye. That's how you get, that's how many it is. Yeah. There's a breeding population of Bigfoots for them to have been around as long as they are.

So it's more than one creature, he told the WWJ News. There's males and females, old ones and young ones. What is going on? In Michigan? No, in this article. In this article? Well, they're saying that there are tons of Bigfoots, feets, and that they like to exchange gifts, although they haven't referenced once what any of the handmade things were or showed any photos of them.

I mean, I believe that there are handmade things. I just don't believe that there's like like families of Bigfoots that like no one has captured, but this guy has like tchotchkes from them. Like I don't understand. I love that you used the phrase tchotchkes. It's perfect. Thanks, that was the only word I could think. That's the perfect word for them. I can't imagine he's giving you things that like really are helpful in your day-to-day life.

I'm just surprised they didn't include any screen caps from the tick talks of like the gifts he's gotten in general. Bigfoot is described as covered in fur, standing eight feet tall or more walking upright and making only fleeting appearances and eyewitness accounts, blurry photos and a lot of shaky videos. According to reporting by the Detroit free press, some believe it's a close relative of humans between man and eight.

Concrete proof, though continues to be hard to get. A Bigfoot body has never been found. Yeah, I mean we do have proof now, though, because they gave gifts. Yeah, that's, if we have a tiktok, that that should hold up in court. Yeah, I will say a shameless plug. If you love Bigfoot, I do generally love Bigfoot. I have a Bigfoot television series up to watch free on tubi right now if you go to 2BTV and type in Boggy Creek the series.

It's a six episode series all about Bigfoot and I directed it. Yeah. Want to make sure people check that out. We had a lot of fun with it, but we always called it the Sasquatch. We didn't really use the term Bigfoot very much. We always called it Sasquatch or Yeti. So. I don't know. I feel like they're all interchangeable. They are. Skunk ape, Sasquatch, Yeti.

Some other thing. Somebody is going to write in so angry because we're like completely wrong and that's fair. Yeah, we'll accept your abusive, abusive messages. Did I tell you I got a message from a fan of Weekly Spooky? And I mean she, she wrote this wonderful fan letter, very sweet, about how much she's enjoying the show, and but she, the subject line was grievances.

Yeah, you told me like totally, it was so funny, it totally faked me out. I was like oh no, and then I opened it. I was like, oh, I was totally ready for my day to be ruined and then it wasn't. And then she sends another message. She's like, wait, I forgot all of the bad stuff, or just a message after this is not or psych harsh.

Well, we got one more from mirror.co.uk behind walls of old of an old asylum where 9 000 patients died ghosts still haunt the halls this is not the same asylum that we've read about before, Michelle, there are so many haunted asylums. There are. Beachworth Lunatic Asylum. Wow. It was literally called Lunatic Asylum. I love that. Beachworth Lunatic Asylum was open in a Victoria town in Australia.

Whoa. Australian. Yeah. From 1867 to 1995. Oh, wow. That's a long time. It was called Lunatic Asylum in 1995. Five beach worth lunatic asylum, I guess. So I guess they're not as sensitive with phrasing. I feel like we were like no more lunatic asylum by like the 70s. We were like you gotta, you gotta call it something else, guys. Uh, but no lunatic asylum.

Um, most of its patients, reports claim, never left the building alive and there were over 9 000 recorded deaths there. That's a lot of deaths. I mean it was open for like like a hundred plus years. It sounds like two, almost 200. It was getting getting up there. It wasn't quite 200, it was like a little over or just about 150 years, okay, which is a very long time.

So I maybe. I mean that makes sense. That's, yeah, that's a long time. People gotta die: yeah, but australia doesn't have the biggest population either. 9 000 people dead, that's a lot, with limited understanding of mental health problems, a lack of developed medication until the 1950s and some seriously ill patients retaining equipment like restraining equipment, like straight jackets, along with electroshock, were used to keep patients in check.

Well, I mean that makes sense. I like how they're like uh, lack of developed medication until the 1950s- yeah, because it was great in the 1950s. I'm unhappy with my life here's uh, lsd, I don't know. Good luck. As a result of the treatment of patients and the type of clientele, the home is a natural attraction for ghost hunters keen on spotting remnants of the world of the patients inside a building made up of peeling brickwork.

It's once white walls, now gray and foreboding. I mean, do you find gray walls more foreboding than white walls? Um, no. In fact, I feel like people like painting walls gray- or at least they did for a couple of minutes- so well, you know, it doesn't show dirt as much, you know. You know you'd be like, oh, it's really worn out. And people would be like, no, it's already gray.

And they're like, yeah, nice, it's like buying a brown car. That's the way to do it. You never gotta clean it. Uh, though, sorry, I just like that. This article just goes right to this, though there is no scientific basis for ghosts. Existing common sightings include matron Sharp, said to be visible sitting with patients during electroshock treatment, and Arthur, a man who used to work on the gardens and the grounds.

Let's see. Drama often surrounded the area, including an escape by 11 patients in 1951 as a fire swept through the building and caused some of the wards to be knocked down. That's pretty crazy. I mean, I get, you know, I mean, at that point, the asylum had almost been there for 100 years. So I guess, you know, some crazy stuff is going to happen.

Mm hmm. The Herald Sun reported, quote, 400 male patients, many naked, were rescued from Beechworth Asylum today. Minutes before a fire caused the blazing top story of the mental hospital to collapse. Eleven patients escaped into surrounding mountainous country. Wow. Seven were later recaptured, but four described as not dangerous are still at large. Wow. I mean, I don't know if they're still at large.

They could be. Yeah. They brought Michael Myers back. That's true. See? Yeah, you're right. Sometimes, sometimes I wonder if you think before you speak. I mean, sometimes. I'm so much worse than that. I literally opened the show with saying something stupid because I didn't think about it before I said it. So I think you're going to be just fine, kid. Stick with me.

No one will even notice. Where the Bristol Ward was located is believed to be the ghost of a doctor who worked at Beechworth. Patients held in the prison. Oh, it's a prison as well, I guess. Yeah, I guess it's an asylum. It's basically a prison. Patients held in the prison can tell grim tales of why they were sent there. Jim Kelly was given 15 years hard labor after burning down the house of his sister-in-law.

Wait, so it was happening now. So is it just like, I thought it was like, what? I mean, I guess they just do it different. And you got to understand that Australia, they have a very different opinion of what a prison is since the whole place was a prison at one time, an open air prison colony, I guess. Poor Australia. That's, we're never going to let that go.

I mean, why would we let that go? I mean, I don't, it's not like I'm looking down on them. It's just part of their history. That's true. I just wonder, I always think whenever I hear like, oh, Australia was a prison colony way back when I'm like, man, that was a long way to ship prisoners. It's really far away. Man. So anyway, sentenced to 15 years hard, hard labor after burning the house of his sister-in-law.

Part of his punishment was to help build. Oh, part of his punishment was to help build the hospital at Beachworth. Oh, that makes more sense. So he wasn't, he was a, he was a prisoner somewhere else. Yeah. And he was doing public works. Okay. But it is said that here, Jim suffered a breakdown and spent the rest of his life inside the asylum where he died in 1903.

Breakdown? Breakdown. Like, was it intentional? Because he didn't want to go back to prison? Why wouldn't he want to go back to prison? I don't know. It's a wonderland. It's got to be the best. Yeah. It's literally so much fun there. Yeah, I mean, he got to do hard labor outside, so it sounds sounds okay. Got to work outside in the fresh air, it's nice, yeah, yeah, it's real nice.

Like the rest of the institution's patients he was- oh my god, he was given an unmarked grave. That's nice, that's what I want. It's like: well, we, uh, we don't really have time to write your name on anything, so there you go. Yeah, kelly was the uncle of bush ranger ned kelly, the infamous outlaw convicted of a number of crimes, including murder.

He was eventually sentenced to death by colonial judge sir redmond barry, who sentenced both jim and ned. So I- this is the part where I have to say I really don't know anything about Australia's history-. I know they had kind of their own old West. I know that was the case, but what? Yeah. I don't know. The site is open to tourists and, uh, the Explorer Beachworth.

Oh, and the Explorer Beachworth asylum offers a range of tours with nighttime paranormal investigation tours only available for those over the age of 16. Oh, as people explore the building to take part in a paranormal investigation with professional equipment and attempt to find out who or what really does haunt the foreboding asylum. What do you think? Do you think the place is haunted?

I guess. Sure. I don't see why not. You're like, why not? I'm going to believe it's haunted as a treat to myself. Yeah. That's nice. Well, good. I'm glad we could agree on that. So, Australia, welcome. You finally made the spooky news. Isn't it nice? We're a global operation here, you know? We just had our first Patreon backer from Canada and our first Patreon backer from the United Kingdom.

Oh, wow. Very cool. Happy to have them here. Yeah. So this one, our final spooky news, this one's from your favorite source, NPR. Oh. Michelle likes to live most of her life in a fugue state, so NPR is playing a lot so that she can stare at nothing and experience nothing. It's important. The National Park Service wants humans to stop licking this toad.

Oh, I heard about this. And there's a picture of a toad with like a infrared camera. So his eyes are glowing white. Aw. I figured we should join in on this public service announcement. Yeah. Go into almost any park and there's often reminders to refrain from going near or petting or feeding wildlife. Not licking strange animals was simply a given. Until now.

I haven't read this article. Please tell me it's a TikTok challenge. That would make me so happy. It's the. It's the tiktok toad lick challenge. Uh, the national park service has added tongue contact with the sonorian desert toad among its various warnings to park visitors. Quote: as we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana, slug, unfamiliar mushroom or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please, please, refrain from licking.

The agency wrote on facebook: hold on right there. I just want to clear something up. Yes, you can totally lick any mushroom you want. You have to physically ingest a mushroom for there to be any chance of you, like, getting sick from it or dying. So feel free to lick mushrooms to your heart's content. So if you lick a mushroom, like if it's poisonous, would it make your tongue a little numb or something, but not really hurt you, or I really don't know.

Um, usually they they cause, like gastrointestinal problems, so I don't actually you'd have to eat it for sure. So, um, and this is just for you know, people in the u.s it's not for mushrooms worldwide but in the u. S you could put any type of mushroom. You could lick any mushroom you want, just you can't swallow it. Well, you wouldn't recommend chewing it and spitting it out either.

There are people who do that. What is the purpose of them doing that? Oh, so they know what it tastes like, so they can identify it. See, I'm starting to worry that as I read this, Michelle's going to end up on the pro licking frog camp. I feel like we're almost there. Like I, I don't feel that great about licking frogs because it doesn't sound like it's consensual.

I mean, that's the only reason I'm not pro licking frogs. I mean, as long as it doesn't hurt the frog Like. And you ask the frog politely first: Totally okay, Okay, okay, You can lick whatever you want. That's Michelle telling you like it is. The toad, also known as the colorado river toad, is about seven inches in size and carries a weak, low-pitched ribbit sound.

But the creature is far from harmless. Oh yeah, you can fall in love with it at any time. No, um, sonoran desert toads secrete a potent toxin that can make people sick if they touch it or get the poison in their mouth, according to the national park service. Oh Well, isn't that the entire point of licking toads Is to get poisoned so that you have like a trip.

Yeah, So I mean It sounds dangerous. I would not lick any animal, though, Not even like, Unless it's like prepared with seven herbs and secret herbs and spices. You know, Ew, You wouldn't like lick a deer or anything. No, Michelle, I don't think that I What what? Not even if someone was like, hey, lick that deer, okay, maybe if someone, if someone said that, yeah, I probably would.

Michelle's weird today, guys, um, despite the risks, some people have discovered that the toad's toxic secretions contain a powerful hallucinogenic compound known as 5-MEO-DMT. I know the phrase DMT because I've heard Joe Rogan once and he mentions it every time he's anywhere. I'm pretty sure DMT and elk meat, baby, those are the things. So, but see, so they're sending mixed signals. They're like, look, don't lick the toad, but it is free DMT exactly, isn't this just me harvesting land?

I had a friend who does DMT a lot and he said that every time he does it he flies into space and talks to aliens. Wow, and after he started doing it a lot, the aliens started telling him he was using DMT too much. Oh, They actually said like you visit us too much. You need to stop and spend more time on your own life For real?

I'm dead serious That's awesome I know right? I'm dead serious I'm dead serious A lot of people say, you know, when you take DMT, it's like, well, as long as you want to like stare in the face of God, whatever. But yeah, no, I'm dead serious. That is not made up. A friend of mine told me that story and he was dead serious.

Yeah. And I believe that he does a lot of DMT because he's very wealthy. So in recent years. Oh, my God. What? Sorry. In recent years, smoking the amphibian secretions has grown in popularity. Michelle's thinking. She's pondering right now. What are you pondering? I'm just trying to figure out how this is done, how you smoke their secretions. I mean, it doesn't say here, but if I had to take a wild guess I would assume that they probably combine it with either cigarette, tobacco or marijuana, like they just kind of dunk it like a donut and coffee.

You mean like but but is it okay, like you, just on the toad? Maybe. Or do we have to kill them? Because now I'm not into it anymore. I don't know if you would have to kill it because I feel like if they were killing toads was the problem, they would put out a thing saying, hey, please don't kill the toads. Okay.

Not, hey, don't lick them. Unless they're trying to say that licking them is not okay, but killing them is fine. But they might be saying that. They might be. Those evil bastards. So much so that the species is even considered threatened. Oh so here we go, at least in new mexico, due to collectors that want to use the animal for drug use.

So they're not. It sounds like they're. They're stealing them and then keeping them to like get their secretions. Okay, I'm not interested in this anymore. Ouch, you. No, I don't mean the article, I mean the show you mean doing. Yeah, I'm leaving. Okay, um, a number of public figures have reported experimenting with the toads. Oh boy, with the toads extracted toxins. Boxing legend mike tyson has spoken about it, and some reach researchers have even begun to study it for potential therapeutic benefits.

Oh god, president, biden's son, hunter biden, has written about using 5-meo-dmt therapy as a form of addiction treatment. This is npr. I'm just impressed that this is so weird for npr. Even you don't. You don't listen to enough npr. Maybe it's just because they say everything in the same tone of voice. I think that it's. I think they're all the same story.

Yeah, do you have something to say about all of this use of toxin, toad toxin? I just don't think. I think if you want to get that kind of like what? Why don't we just use mushrooms? Then, like I just I don't particularly want to use anything, but I just I'm getting worried for that. These toad frog things, I mean I am, I hope the toads are okay.

That's the thing I carry about. Yeah, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration considers 5-MeO-DMT as a schedule one drug, meaning it is currently not accepted for medical use and has a high potential for abuse. So why don't we make these toads illegal? Yeah, so wait. So if the toad is illegal, like what do you do when you find one? Because it is it, how is it like, because it's committing a crime by existing?

Yes, so they do what the dao always does: break into the wrong house and shoot a dog, okay, and then yeah, oh, and then eventually something else, maybe, oh, okay, yeah, I mean, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if the dea has already said: oh, we won the war against the toads, that's the end of that. Yeah, we beat them. So, Michelle, now you have a choice.

Do you want the suicide headset or one of these toads for Christmas? I, I guess you can get me the suicide headset, because I just don't. I just don't want the toad to be sad. So I'll just die. You don't know. Maybe you'll be really good at the game, which I think is going to be Frogger. Oh. Or Double Dragon. NES games.

I feel like those are Contra. Yeah. But if you die in the game, you get your skull cracked in real life. weird time for news stories i gotta admit yeah thanks to the show i'm like following weird news a lot more and um there sure is a lot but one thing i can always count on is mirror.co. Uk posts so many ghost stories that I probably choose like 10 of them.

Wow, that's how many they have. There's a lot of ghosts, it's there's a lot of ghosts in england. So, yeah, but now it's time for us to take a quick break, Michelle. But when we get back, we're going to talk about the dark origins of popular Christmas traditions and how ghost stories became a common trend in celebrating the Yuletide season. After these words from our sponsors.

And we're back right here on Monthly Spooky and Michelle tell them that joke. You were going to tell me. No, we, we said we weren't going to say it. What are you afraid of getting canceled? Yeah, Michelle. Michelle is like she seems really nice and low-key, but she's actually like such a potty mouth and she's always like saying offensive things. So we're back here with our basically holiday edition of Monthly Spooky.

We're about to head into december and I've always wanted to dive deep into some of the darker origins of Christmas traditions. So I found a story on insider.com about the origins of Christmas traditions and I thought this might be fun to dig around in and hopefully it won't turn out that this is a crepe paper advertisement like last time. I'll never forget that.

So here's our first one. You know, you know, Good King Wenceslas, right? Yeah. It says Good King Wenceslas was a real person who was stabbed and dismembered. Oh. Good King Wenceslas is a popular Christmas carol about a kind king who helps a poor peasant in a snowstorm. However, most people don't know that the inspiration for the song was a real person who died horribly.

Wenceslas I, Duke of Bohemia, was born in 907 A.D. After the death of his father, Verat Salas I, Wenceslas, was raised by his mother, Dromoria. who was the daughter of a pagan tribal chief. In September 935 AD, Wenceslas was murdered on his brother's orders. He was stabbed repeatedly with a lance while praying and dismembered in front of a church. Oh. At least it's festive.

Mm-hmm. Do you know any of the words to that song? No. Me neither. My favorite rendition of Good King Wenceslas is the Mojo Nixon and the Toad Lickers version. where they start the song and then they realize they don't know the word, so they just go, la, la, la. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. But it slaps.

Like that, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. It slaps, right? Would you say it slaps? Sure. You're like, I would never, ever say it slaps. But so now we know good King Wenceslas, he was stabbed to death and dismembered in front of a church. Yeah. That's weird. Praying while praying. That's the weirdest part. You'd think he would stop after, like the second or third stab.

You'd be like god, thank you for this figgy pudding which you have. Ow, ow, stop it. You know, like you'd think he'd break away. Well, I mean, maybe he was praying not to be killed. He was praying not to be stabbed anymore. Yeah, it's like god. Eight is an ah, nine is enough. You know, The past is weird. Yeah. In the 1700s, carolers would sometimes break down doors and demand food and drink from residents.

Yeah. I like that tradition. Yeah, me too. Singing carols door to door may be an innocent holiday diversion today, but it was once a controversial and potentially dangerous practice. You ever gone carol singing? Like maybe once. Really? Yeah. Man, we never did. It's not, I mean, I didn't really enjoy it. It's fine. Oh, geez. In a piece for Salon, author and historian Thomas Christensen recounted how the carolers or wassailers of the 17th century would arrive at homes unannounced and demand to be given the residents finest food and drink.

They would sometimes threaten violence and rape. What? To destroy property and sing songs with lyrics such as, we've come here to claim our right. And if you don't open up your door, we'll lay it flat upon the floor. Wow. You know, it gets cold and you just go for it, I guess. I hope these people had guns like the people in the houses had guns.

They most certainly did not. Fuck. Sorry. There were not many guns. And I think this was in England. Yeah. So they were like, well, we can't have that. We can't have an America again. One minister in the early 1700s railed against the observance of Christmas and especially the practice of caroling. He complained that caroling drove people to rioting, chambering, which is a term for fornication and wantonness.

Huh. I wonder if any of this is real now. Because now they're doing the thing that's like, oh, it's on the news. Like, oh, did you know that carolers also rape people? Like, now I'm thinking this is just all lies that the government is perpetuating to make Christmas go away. I don't know. Whoa, somebody sounded like Alex Jones all of a sudden.

It's okay. You're allowed to believe that, you know. Do you want to say wake up, sheeple? No, because I don't like that term. Fair enough. I was at thanksgiving dinner, by the way, uh, the other day, and one of uh rachel's relatives mentioned mentioned that she was uh watching. She works at a school and she was watching the kids doing recess and and she told one of the kids to stop doing something and the kid turned to her and said and said, miss, whatever, you're an npc, it's like eight years old, yay.

So I just wanted you to know that and I wanted you to know that I was told my chicken and dumplings were straight bussin by an 11 year old. Jeez, okay, very important that I tell you that. Thank you, you're welcome. I'm always watching out for you, pal. So, um, before we go on, by the way, so, Michelle, you are the chosen people.

I am, yes, oh, a hebrew. Oh, so you, you grew up celebrating hanukkah and Christmas together, correct, yes, but you guys celebrated Christmas, but weren't both your parents jewish, or am I wrong? No, my, my dad is only half jewish, but on his father's side, so they actually didn't celebrate any. Oh, so that's he did not grow Jewish. Right. Okay. So that's where Christmas was like really pushed.

Okay. I didn't know that that element that makes a lot more sense. Also Christmas is fun to celebrate. And I know a lot of people get kind of hung up on Christmas. To me, I like that Christmas is more and more secular every year. I like the idea that you could be like, well, religiously, I celebrate Hanukkah because I believe in that.

But I also really like like gifts and lights and music of Christmas. So I'm going to do that too. I'm like, hell yeah. I love when people are like, you can't celebrate Christmas. You're an atheist. I'm like, Oh, whose rules do I follow them? Stop me. I'm literally wearing a buddy, the elf t-shirt. I am. For those who don't know, I am Mr.

Christmas. Like I, I have my Christmas Hawaiian shirt, which is like a Santa suit. I'm wearing it like the whole month. I love Christmas. I really do. You love Christmas too, though. I don't think I love it as much as you do. Well, nobody loves Christmas as much as me. Even I don't love Christmas as much as I do. Yeah, try to figure that one out.

I don't know. Well, and you and I both have an unexpected and confusing love of Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies. I think that both of us people would be very surprised. Yeah, probably. You know, both of us, just the way we are, not shocked, but surprised. You'd be like, really? Well, I guess you like whatever you like. That's kind of our thing is we like what we like.

But, you know, they'd be like, really? It's like, oh, yeah. I remember one year I got a cable package just to watch Hallmark and Lifetime in December. It was awesome. Anyway, sorry, I digress. I just wanted to mention that because Hanukkah is closer to Christmas this year, isn't it? It's really close. I think it goes over Christmas. It goes through Christmas, I think.

I know it's the week right before, so I don't know if it overlaps or not right now. First day of Hanukkah is the 19th. Okay, so, yeah. Four, five, six, seven. Yeah, yeah. It would go to the 26th, right? I don't know how time works, but yeah. So yeah, Christmas is on like the seventh day of Hanukkah. Cool. Let's do it. Yeah.

So anyway, although it's become a pretty ballet, The Nutcracker is a surprisingly creepy tale. The Nutcracker Ballet is based on the 1816 story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by German author. Well, there you go. German author E.T.A. Hoffman. In the original tale, a seven-year-old girl named Marie slices her arm open after being startled by a vision of her toy nutcracker coming to life.

As she recuperates, her grandfather, Drosselmeier, tells her the tale of a man cursed with the ugliness of a nutcracker by a heartless queen. Oh, okay. Like I feel like I, I feel like like pre, like pre, like 1870, all stories were horrible, like it just, it's just the way it is. It's like, oh, this is a story about a girl who gets a puppy, so her parents get cut, get their throats slit in front of her by a gang of miscreants, and then and you're like, wait what they're like, yeah, no, no, she's gonna get to the puppy, don't worry.

So they're, every story is like so dark. I mean because everybody knows about how like Grim fairy tales are like really grim. Yeah. So when Marie eventually declares that she would love the Nutcracker, no matter his appearance, she is whisked away into the doll kingdom to marry him. Oh, come on. That's not nice. It gets, it gets nicer actually somewhat. The two are wed within a year of meeting.

So they're not wed that day. Okay. That's good. They got some time to get to know each other. even though that would make Marie eight years old at the time of her marriage. Okay. So she wasn't seven anymore. So that's good. You're like, this is getting better by the second. Well, you know, that was what, what, what you're 18. You know what?

1816 Germany. I'm just going to let that one go. That's a long time ago. Like they didn't even know you had to wash your hands before you stuck your hands into someone's open chest cavity yet. So you know what? Fine. Yeah. They didn't know that for a long time. Yeah, it was after the Civil War they figured it out. Christmas parties may have their origins in wild pagan festivals.

That doesn't make any sense, except in every way. That's obvious, I think. That's the other reason Christmas is so fun, because it's a hodgepodge of a bunch of celebratory elements. And I love any excuse to celebrate. That's one of the reasons I like Thanksgiving so much. I like an excuse to celebrate before Christmas. And I think that one thing that's really been lost, but it's been lost for good reason, is feasts.

It used to be that the number one way to celebrate anything was a feast because food could be very difficult to come by. It could be very scarce. And whenever you had plenty of food and you had something or you had anything to celebrate, you would gather up as much food as you could. You'd be like, let's all eat until we're full to celebrate this thing.

And it was special. Of course, now, with modern food availability and stuff, I mean, basically every day is a feast compared to the the history of humankind, like like, if you go to mcdonald's and you get a big mac and a large fry, that is like a medieval feast. It's worth of food, yeah, and and that's you know what you had for lunch.

Because you're like, oh, I didn't want to go crazy because didn't you know I'm gonna have pork chops for dinner, so I only got a burger. So you know I was. So I always like the idea of like a purposeful meal, like Thanksgiving or like Christmas dinner, Christmas Eve dinner or the Feast of Seven Fishes, which I'm really trying to pull off this year.

That'd be cool. Yeah, people are like, what's the Feast of Seven Fishes? It's annoying, you don't want to know. It's an old Roman Catholic tradition where you eat seven different types of sea creature on Christmas Eve because they consider that fasting, because you don't want to heavily eat, because Christmas Day is when you'll have the Christmas feast. So you have the feast of seven fishes, which, from their perspective, is like not eating at all, eating seven fishes, types of fishes.

So I'm thinking about doing it because you can get away with some lazy options like you can do, like fried shrimp, which is really easy. You can do baked salmon, which is really easy. You can even do anchovies or sardines on crackers, which is really easy. The entire point is it has to be seven different fishes are served. Well, to be fair, as long as you can afford the seven fishes, because I can't.

Like fish is so easy to cook. It's so easy and it takes like no time. Well, if you're from like old world Italy, it's a lot more work because they have some fishes that they have to do every year, like smelt and things like that that are a little bit more involved. I know one of the things they often do is pickled fish.

So they have to soak it for like days to get all the salt out, because that's traditionally how you do it is. You have to, you have to try and get as much of the salt out as you can. So you soak it and every six hours you change the water. You could, um, if you want to emulate that, but not at all, you could get some gefilte fish.

There you go. I would totally go for some gefilte fish. I thought about doing um sushi rolls as one of the items. You know that would be nice, like that could be the tuna. Yeah, so I might do it. I don't know yet. We'll see if I can convince rachel that it's not the worst idea I've ever had. Also, cooking seven things in one kitchen sucks, yeah.

So anyway, Christmas hasn't always been celebrated on december 25th. That date, the date of jesus's birth, was only officially decided more than 300 years after his death by pope julius the first. Before that, christ's birth was marked on at least three different dates: March 29th, January 6th and sometime in june. Thanks for doing your research conveniently, december 25th roughly coincides with the date of the roman festival of saturnalia and the winter solstice.

According to encyclopedia britannica, this ancient festival involved unrestrained drinking and role reversal between slaves and their masters. Schools were closed, criminals were allowed to run rampant and the wealthy were encouraged to give gifts to the poor in order to avoid robbery. Oh, wow. So it's a little bit of Halloween, which I was actually thinking about that earlier, when the that one church was like anti-Christmas because it made all the people go crazy.

That's how Halloween was like. That's one of the reasons they came up with trick-or-treat was like let's give them something to do other than like wreck everything. But I love that in this old world time. They were like we want to be kind, let's let the criminals out for the day. It's like, yeah, it's like all of them, all of them, okay, because like some of them like murder and eat people.

It's like, yeah, like you gotta let them out. And it's like, well, and how do we get them back? It's like, yeah, we rearrest them because they're going to hurt people. Like it's fine, like what, what? So, although I will say, learning about the carolers- and this makes the we wish you a Merry Christmas song- make a lot more sense. Now give us some piggy pudding.

Now give, they're demanding. Yeah. Ooh, Yule log. Wait, what? It says Yule logs used to be real wooden logs. I guess they're referring to a dessert called a Yule log. We don't eat the Yule log here. Do you? No. It says although we think of Yule logs today as sweet Christmas cakes. Okay. See, I don't, I always thought of a Yule log as something you put in the fireplace.

Yeah, there is a food. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure, well, I mean, that makes sense. They used to be actual logs that would be burned on the fire. It'd be weird if they were burned not on the fire, which were burned next to the fire. Back in Europe's Iron Age, many people would burn logs decorated with pinecones, holly and ivy, according to the History Channel.

That'd probably smell really good. Yeah. Burning the logs was said to bring good luck for the new year, but the ashes were some of the biggest prizes from the ceremony. They were said to ward against aging and even protect the person who had them against lightning, which, as the history channel noted, was important given that many houses were made of wood. Jeez, okay, I like how it's like.

It's like we just don't want to be smote. Oh, this one looks good going down. The chimney is actually tied to dozens of scary supernatural legends. Oh yeah, as it turns out, santa isn't the only one who can creep into homes unnoticed via the chimney. There are countless european legends that tell of both helpful and malicious spiritual creatures sneaking into homes through chimneys.

That's yeah, I'm, I'm down. I'm like totally listening on this one. The other ones I wasn't listening, I was just reading. Scottish and english legends tell of the brownie, which is a helpful household spirit that enters and exits homes at night through the chimney. Okay, in the middle ages, witches were also thought to pass into chimney, into homes, through their chimneys in Greece.

Oh, wow. I can't, I'm never going to be able to say that word in Greece. Goblins called the Calacanthas area, Zaroi, uh, we're known to crawl into homes through the chimney and terrorize the families within in 19th century, Pennsylvania. Oh, Pels nickel or bells nickel slipped down the chimneys to reward good children with oranges and punish naughty ones with a whip. Oh, geez, I'm assuming a like, cool whip, or like, and is there, did because it, like oranges, could just be there.

So, like, do they just give them a whip? They're like, you just get a whip here you go, kid, go go hit that kid and take his oranges. You're about to learn a lot about life. Um, okay, this one's interesting. I've never heard this one before. Mistletoe used to be used to pardon criminals. Although we see it now as a plant meant to be kissed under, mistletoe has some darker origins.

Is it darker? If it's giving people clemency, let's, let's, maybe there- yeah, maybe I'm misreading- it was seen as a sign of friendship by the druids and because of that it was banned by religious leaders in england. Oh, religious leaders in england, it's the gift that keeps on giving. But later, york minster church in the uk began to hold a special mistletoe service each winter.

During that service, criminals from the town could come and bring a sprig of mistletoe to be pardoned for their wrongdoings. Okay, they would apparently declare public and universal liberty, pardon and freedom of all sorts of inferior and wicked people at the minster gates and the gates of the city towards the four quarters of heaven. Okay, today, yeah, today, you can still see mistletoe on the altar of some churches during the holiday season.

I thought that was just because people like to get a little, you know a little, lip and tongue action. So, uh, that one's a strange one. And then it became: you kiss under it. I guess that makes sense. You get kissed, like you know, with freedom, yeah, or maybe just with freedom. Sounds like somebody punched you, yeah, no, maybe they like also when they pardon them.

They gave them a kiss or something. That would be so cute. I would love that. Like on their forehead, yeah, or just like the lightest peck on the lips, like a, like an aunt or uncle kiss on the lips. You know just, you know just real quick, not not a long. You know not a long porn hub style aunt and uncle kiss.

I mean, like you know, just a little peck. Okay, what? I don't have random relatives kissing me on the lips. Well, I mean, I meant more when you're younger too. Like, not do that. Yeah, your family don't like kissing each other because you hate each other, all right, so, uh, did you ever? Did you ever see daddy's home too? I don't think so.

It was the Christmas one. Uh, will, ferrell's dad shows up and he's played by john lithgow and he's just like a big goof. And mark walberg's dad is played by mel gibson and he's like the coolest dude ever and when. When will ferrell sees his daddy, runs up and gives him a hug and they just start kissing on the mouth immediately. I'm so happy to see you.

I love that so much. All right, um. So, speaking of commercializing Christmas, this says a charlie brown Christmas was actually intended to be a feature-length coca-cola commercial. Oh, sounds weird, though less dark and more surprising. The adventures of the peanuts gang in the 1965 film a charlie brown Christmas were originally intended to be a commercial for the soda coke. The original film included title slides telling viewers that the program was sponsored by coca-cola company.

In response to changing attitudes about product placement over the years, cbs quietly edited out references to the coke in the program. That's a little, that's cheap. Yeah, that's a cheap shot. Everything used to be brought by, like alcoa, brought to you by alcoa, or you know, the rockefeller thing of whatever like. That used to always be, that used to always be a thing.

I should have skipped that. One lousy coke hating people. Do you like charlie brown Christmas? Me too. There's no commentary there, we just like it. Yeah, it's nice. Milk and cookies began as a great depression ritual in america. Oh, that's interesting. Leaving out milk and cookies for santa is a tradition that many places practice, but it began being popularized in america during the great depression, According to the History Channel.

Parents encourage children to leave cookies for Santa during that time of economic hardship to show that you should always be grateful for the things that you were given and that giving was just as good as receiving. Aww. I really like that. Yeah. I always like the idea that you leave cookies out for Santa because it's like he's giving you gifts. He's not asking for anything in return.

The least you could do is like make his day a little easier. Mm-hmm. So, uh, hanging Christmas stockings may be connected to a legend about poverty. Okay, packing those stockings full of treats may be a fun Christmas tradition these days, but the custom may have its origins in a decidedly grim tale of illness and poverty, according to donald e dosi's book holiday folk folklore, phobias and fun.

I want that book. I'm buying that book, Holy crap. No, I'm buying that book. The tradition is tied to a story about a fourth century bishop who overheard an elderly man bemoaning the fact that he would not have enough money to supply his three daughters with a dowry. Oh, that's so sad. So people have to marry him for free. Yeah. Gross. At the time, women lacking a dowry would be unable to marry and would likely have been forced into prostitution in order to support themselves.

Oh. Are you feeling Christmassy? I'm feeling very Christmassy right now. I'm glad. The legend goes that St. Nicholas was so moved by the old man's plight that he crept into the family's home at night and filled their stockings, which had been hung by the fireplace to dry with bags of gold. Aww. The three women and their father lived happily ever after. The women finally worth something.

Yeah. Father, I finally have value. Music swells, the bishop would later and anoint, later be anointed saint nicholas, the patron saint of children, and at least one inspiration for santa claus, I'm sure you probably. I mean, we all know about calling him jolly old saint nick and stuff. Yeah. So did you believe in santa claus when you were a kid? Um, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Was it fun believing in santa claus? Yeah, yeah, was it fun? I don't know, I guess that sounded like a loaded question. I also grew up leaving in Santa Claus. I'm just curious if you had fun with it. I mean, I did, I guess. Yeah, did you ever ask like stupid questions, like about Santa Claus or just in general? Let's go with just Santa Claus, because we don't have all day for the show.

No, I mean, not really. I don't think. See, I would ask things like: well, you gotta remember, did you have a chimney growing up? Um, yes,. Wow. So you rich people. So we were always in apartments. We did have one apartment with a chimney though, but it was when I was very young, we had a fireplace, which was pretty awesome. But, but when we started getting out of the ghetto, oddly enough, that was when we just didn't have a fireplace.

So I remember my mom used to tell me that she would leave the screen door unlocked and that's how Santa would get in and drop her presents off. That's nice. Yeah. How'd you find out? Oh, sorry, please. I was just going to say like I didn't always have a chimney growing up when I was really young we didn't have a chimney. You had to earn it.

Yeah. Yeah. So when I was a kid Santa got ruined because kids at school kept like insisting on telling me that Santa wasn't real. And I already had a suspicion because I was a little bit older. But I don't know. Do you remember when you found out Santa wasn't real or was it today? No. It was. Yeah. Thanks. No, I don't actually know.

It wasn't something that was revealed to me. It was just kind of like I got it, you know, and I had younger siblings. So I just eventually was like, okay, I get it, it's not real. So it wasn't like a gender reveal, it wasn't revealed to you by like an exploding thing that causes a forest fire, there's no Santa and also we have to evacuate right now.

Yeah, I, I loved believing in Santa Claus, but I I because I believed into in it until I got to a point of just logic where once somebody said there's no Santa, I was like, yeah, how would there be? Yeah, exactly, yeah, we also like Christmas was. I loved Christmas growing up but like in hindsight, I know that it was a lot harder time of year than I ever knew.

Like I remember telling my mom a little while back that I remembered how fun it was, how, one year- you know, mom was mom, my mom was working two jobs a lot when I was much younger and, uh, I told her I was like, remember that time we were too tired, like you were just so exhausted from working everything. We didn't get a Christmas tree because it was just like too exhausting, so we decorated the banister of our stairs and my mom was like, sweetie, that was a lie, we couldn't afford a Christmas tree.

So I just didn't say anything, I just said that I was too tired to get one, so let's just do the banister. And I was like, oh, because I just believed her implicitly, you know. And yeah, she said that that was one of those years that it was like Christmas tree or more presents, like, yeah, what do you do? So she was like so, yeah, so we would just dig into the Christmas boxes in the closet.

We decorated the handrail and the banister and everything with like all of our ornaments and our lights and everything, and on Christmas morning all the gifts were on the under the banister. Cool, yeah, I, I appreciate that level of lying to me as a child. Yeah, I agree, when you were a kid, did you have like were there any adults in your life that would just like mess with you, to drive you crazy?

Like they would like tell you like silly lies or like frustrate you for fun? No, okay, so everyone was that for me when I was a kid. So my stepdad was so good at like frustrating me for fun. And I was talking to Rachel's little nephew who's like nine, at the Christmas and I was so good at doing it to him, I was so proud.

Yeah, well, he's a little bit of a butthead, so he would like say something kind of like like he. He went, he was eating the food and I was talking to somebody about the chicken and dumplings I had made and he was like. And he was like: did you make this macaroni? And I said no And he was like: I know you didn't.

My family did. And I was like, all right then, dude. And then, but then he was like, I like to play Minecraft. And I was like, what is that? He was like, it's a game. And I was like, so like you, you dig for crafts, like arts and crafts, like they're in there. And he was like, and he kept rolling and going, no, that would be stupid.

And I was like, okay, so what do you do? He's like, you, he starts describing it. And then I'm like, but how do you not like, do the mines ever explode? Cause like their, their minds, aren't they going to explode? He was getting so mad, getting so frustrated. And I was like, yeah, I'm the adult. I always wanted to be the one I hated when I was a kid.

I could not stand adults like that. They drove me insane. And now that's who I am. Yeah. I couldn't be prouder. So we're going to, we're going to go to a quick break and then we'll be back. And we're going to talk a little bit about how ghost stories became a tradition at Christmas right after these words. And we're back during the break.

Michelle hung her stockings with care. Thank you. And if I'm feeling generous, I will put a dowry in there for you so you can finally become a waifu. Man. Speaking of waifu, I want to reiterate, Michelle has a brand new podcast she's hosting called Michelle Explains Anime Poorly. And I really enjoyed it. There's two episodes out as of right now, a new episode on Thursdays.

So please check it out wherever you get podcasts if you enjoy anime. And I know some of you who are listening do like anime. So make sure to check that out. So Michelle's just like, I'm not going to say a word about it. Yeah. So I wanted to talk a little bit. I was actually struggling to figure out like, what did I want the main topic to be of this month's episode?

And then I realized I love doing deep dives about how Christmas has lots of scary story traditions, especially in England. I remember when I found out that A Christmas Carol was actually just one of many ghost stories that people told around Christmas. It just happened to be the most Christmassy one because it turns out that they would tell Christmas. They would tell ghost stories on Christmas Eve that had nothing to do with Christmas all the time.

And Dickens wrote tons of ghost stories that were for Christmas Eve. So that got me curious. So I figured today let's dive a little bit into this. So I found a history.com story called the Christmas tradition of gross ghost stories. Cause where else would you want to learn the tradition of ghost stories at Christmas? Then right here at the weekly spookies, Monthly Spooky.

I just knocked something off my desk. I'm sure it broke. That's fine. So, uh, so towards the end of each year, as fireplaces are lit and hot cocoa is made, Americans have made it a tradition to revisit their favorite classic holiday books, movies, and songs. And though ghost stories may seem out of place in present day American holiday celebrations, they were once a Christmas staple reaching their peak of popularity in Victorian England.

Makes sense. What's your favorite? Do you have a favorite Christmas song in Christmas movie? I don't, I don't know. I didn't, I didn't think about it. I mean, you don't have to have like an absolute favorite, You could just have one you want to share. I like that song. You know, Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto by James Brown. Yeah, That's my favorite.

What song? Christmas Shoes? Nope The sad one You gotta be more specific with Christmas songs I like the I don't know what it's called. I have to have yourself a merry little Christmas song. Yeah. I like that song. Yeah. I like, yeah, I like, I like all Christmas songs. I'm really bad about it, but I love Santa Claus goes straight to the ghetto by James Brown.

It's one of my absolute favorites. I like anything on the horny holidays album by Mojo Nixon, which includes a really great cover of Santa Claus goes straight to the ghetto, by the way. So I, I've always loved Christmas music. Oh, yeah, what I like, that song by that band, um, yeah, the, the song, the. Oh no, I don't remember anything about what I like.

Jewel, the lump of coal, like that is. Oh, okay, that's my favorite Christmas song. Okay, I can dig that the end. Sorry, that's weird, it's a weird choice. But okay, I like no, I like that one too. Um, I was trying to think there was one other. Oh, my quintessential Christmas album is: uh, have yourself a scary little Christmas by, uh, the crypt keeper, the tales from the crypt Christmas album.

I love that one. It has classic Christmas songs rewritten to be macabre, like instead of we wish you- I've never played it for you, you might have. Actually I'll have to send you some like we wish you a merry Christmas becomes. We wish you'd bury the missus. It's been a long year, forget what she did and forgive the dear soul. Just bury the hatchet and dig her a hole, stuff like that.

It's really fun because it's all, like you know, good fun, and stuff like that. And they have all kinds of jokes, like you hear people talking and then you hear an explosion. He goes: oh, looks like someone got into the mistletoe. Oh god, I'm doing the crypt keeper voice on the show. This is not good, okay. So I love, I love that album so much.

Um, there's stuff like uh instead of um, like uh, what was it? Uh, the 12 days of cryptmas, where it's like uh, 4 000 volts, three lethal blows, two murderous shoves and a trip to the mortuary. It's great. It's so much fun, especially if you like a little bit more dark humor in your Christmas. So, yeah. And of course it has the Christmas rap, which is the second rap song the Crypt Keeper ever did.

And I love it. So anyway, I got to stop talking about this now, but at least I can know as I'm recording this, that David DeNoyer will be listening, smiling ear to ear because he loves the tales from the Crypt Christmas album as much as I do. So anyway, a dark and spooky time of year, like most long withstanding cultural customs, the precise origin of telling ghost stories at the end of the year is unknown.

largely because it began as an oral tradition without written records. But according to Sarah Clado, a folklorist specializing in British literature and co-founder of the Carter Hall School of Folklore and the Fantastic, the season around winter solstice has been one of transition and change. Quote, for a very, very, very long time. The season has provoked oral stories about spooky things in many different countries and cultures all over the world.

She says. Furthermore, spooky storytelling gave people something to do during the long dark evenings before electricity. Sure that one makes a lot of sense. Yeah, the long mid quote, the long midwinter nights meant folks had to stop working early and they spent their leisure hours huddled close to the fire, says tara moore, an assistant professor of english at elizabeth town college, author of victorian Christmas in print and editor of the valencourt book of victorian Christmas ghost stories,.

Plus you didn't need to be literate to retell the local ghost story. That's a really good point. Yeah. You didn't have to be literate to just pass along a ghost story. Yeah. See, I love that. That makes me feel like I'm celebrating Halloween and Christmas all year long on Weekly Spooky. Yeah. Yeah. See, see, it all works out. Your family I'm assuming did not tell ghost stories at Christmas.

No, no, Neither did mine. Not even a little bit. So and then here we go. There are effects of the Industrial Revolution. It was in Victorian England that telling supernatural tales at the end of the year, specifically during the Christmas season, went from an oral tradition to a timely trend. This was in part due to the development of the steam powered printing press during the industrial revolution that made the written word more widely available.

Well, that I mean you know. You know, I'm gonna hot take you. Okay, you ready for a hot take? Okay, hot take. I think the printing press had a major effect on human life. I don't think so. That's why it's a hot take. I haven't vetted it, I haven't planned it through, but it's how I feel. Okay. This gave Victorians the opportunity to commercialize and commodify existing oral ghost stories, turning them into a version they could sell.

Quote, higher literacy rates, cheaper printing costs, and more periodicals meant that editors needed to fill pages, Moore says. Around Christmas time, they figured they could convert the old storytelling tradition to a printed version. And that makes sense too. I'm sure they're going to talk about it when we get deeper in. But in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, they used to have a tradition on the BBC on Christmas Eve of showing a ghost episode, like a ghost mini movie.

In fact, one of my favorite horror stories of all time was one of the dead of night ghost stories for Christmas Eve. But I don't want to go into it because I'm far too cultured to share all of my secrets. People who moved out of their towns and villages and into larger cities still wanted access to the supernatural sagas they heard around the fireplace growing up quote.

Fortunately, victorian authors like elizabeth gaskell, margaret oliphant and arthur conan doyle worked through the fall to cook up these stories and have them ready to print in time for Christmas. Moore says industrialization not only provided tools to distribute spooky stories. Uncertainty during the era also fueled an interest in the genre says Brittany Warman, Warman, a folklorist specializing in Gothic literature and co-founder of the Carter Hall school of folklore and the fantastic interest was driven.

She says by the rise of industrialization, the rise of science and the looming fall of Victorian Britain as a superpower. All of these things were in people's minds and made the world seem a little bit darker and a little bit scarier. I get that. Yeah. I mean, you know, they were like, look, we were fine with like the 70 percent infant mortality rate and the like 41 year old life expectancy.

But things are getting a little rough right now. Yeah. Stories would find a wide-ranging audience. Telling horror-filled holiday tales continued to be a family affair in england, even when they were read rather than recited. Quote: we know from illustrations and diaries that whole families read these periodicals together. Moore says it's almost like the you know the dawn of radio, almost yeah. The popularity of victorian Christmas ghost stories also transcended socioeconomic status, according to Moore.

They were available to read everywhere from cheap publications to expensive Christmas annuals that middle-class ladies would show off on their coffee tables. Wow. Juliet, what is that there? Oh, oh, that's nothing. No, no, what is it? Oh, well, it's just the periodical, the Christmas annual, you know, the expensive one. Oh my, is that color? Yes, it is. I hate you. Good. That was.

That was the exchange back then. Um, their broad audience was reflected in the stories themselves, which sometimes centered around working class characters and other times took place in haunted manor houses. Okay, these upper quote, these upper class settings were intended to invite readers from all classes into an idealized upper crust Christmas, the type today's fans of Downton Abbey still enjoy his entertainment- more ads.

So then we get into what they call the Charles Dickens effect. Charles Dickens 1843 novella, a Christmas story was has forever linked the British author with the holiday season, but his contributions to Christmas in Victorian England, including the tradition of telling and reading ghost stories, extend far beyond Jacob Marley's visit to Scrooge. In fact, Cleto says that Dickens played a huge part in popularizing the genre in England.

Quote, he wrote a bunch of different Christmas novellas, several of which were involved, several of which involved ghosts specifically, she says. Quote, and he then started editing more and more Christmas ghost stories from other people and working those into the magazines he was already editing. And that just caught on like wildfire. Oh, I didn't know that he was like responsible for publishing tons of them too.

That's pretty cool. Yeah, you like Christmas Carol. Yeah, I've always liked it, do you? How do you feel about the fact that Scrooge is kind of a really inappropriate Jewish archetype? I mean, I don't feel good about it. It's tough because, like you want to like, it is worrisome. I remember when I first pointed out to my buddy Dave, he was mortified when he realized that Ebenezer is so like clearly kind of a Jewish caricature.

But in that era, I mean, bankers were almost exclusively Jewish people. I mean, that's not a racist thing. That's like banker. Jewish people could not own farms. Right. They couldn't do other things. So they were like tailors and bankers. And then there's the whole usury thing. Jewish people didn't have a religious rule against loaning people money for interest. So that kind of was the birth of that, not to get like heavily philosophical, but that is.

I mean, that's why that's where that stereotype comes from. It's not that jews just simply wanted so desperately to loan money to people so they could get that interest. It was that they, they, they that the christian bible and the quran both completely said usury was illegal, was wrong, and eventually that got softened a little bit, but for a really long time Jewish people were one of the only people morally they were able to loan money.

Yeah and that, and you can say what you want about that, but like that was the birth of modern business, because being able to take a loan and make a business was for society's sake. You know, more so than anything. But no, so it's like I, I don't and, and you know they never did anything like when you read the original Christmas Carol, there's never anything straight up anti-semitic about it.

Yeah, it's just that ebenezer is very clearly a jewish man who owns a bank and is very greedy, but the point of the story is: and doesn't celebrate Christmas man. This is getting worse the more I say it out loud. But uh, but no, and you know, and a lot of the like traditional depictions of ebenezer. He has like a big hook nose and you know.

So there's not great, but it is what almost all bankers were in that era by like almost by law. I mean, it wasn't. It wasn't just that Jews just love money so much. They want to be surrounded by it all day, every day. It was, you know, it was a, an unfortunate telling of that element. I just, Oh, sorry, please. No, it's okay.

Oh, I was just gonna say, I just read a bunch about usury and how Jews got involved in the money market. Like I just read about that the other day. What were you going to say? Oh, I was going to say, and at least it, it's, it's very humanizing of him. Like it, it explains like why he is the way he is.

It's not like, Oh, he's just a bad dude. and we scare him and make him better. Yeah. No, I agree. And Ebenezer is a wonderful character. You know, he's a very sad, tragic character who, you know, loses the ability to care, which is just horrible. Yeah. So I love Christmas Carol. I do. I love it so much. Dickens also helped shape Christmas literature in general, Moore says, by formalizing expectations about themes like forgiveness and reunion during the holiday season.

That makes sense. Yeah, so I'm glad we touched on the, the weird element of ebenezer scrooge. Yeah, at least they didn't name him some like really obvious jewish name- that would have been way worse. Like, uh, like shlomo, uh, morowitz or some you know ridiculous day, like you are greedy. At least they didn't do that, yeah, so although countless trends made their way from england to America during the Victorian area, the retelling of ghost stories during the Christmas season was not one that really caught on.

A Christmas Carol was an immediate bestseller in the United States, but at the time of its publication, Dickens was arguably the most famous writer in the world and already wildly popular. The novella's success in the U.S. Likely had more to do with Dickens' existing massive fan base than it did Americans' interest in incorporating the supernatural into Christmas. I believe that yeah, well, and you know we america we have like puritanical roots and stuff.

So you know we're not like dying to have massive paganism kind of stuff. You know they're afraid of it. Yeah, yeah, wrongly, because Christmas is full of weird magic and I love it. Um, quote: american Christmas scenes and stories tended to be syrupy sweet. More says there. There were a few american writers of the period, quote- trying to put victorian style Christmas ghost stories into american culture.

Warman says, including nathaniel hawthorne and henry james washington. Irving uh made a similar and earlier attempt, slipping the supernatural into Christmas themed short stories published in 1819 and 1820. Okay, man, that's so long ago It's like hard for me to comprehend it. Warman theorizes that America's reluctance to embrace the Christmas ghost story tradition had to do at least in part with the country's attitude toward things like magic and superstitions.

Exactly. Yeah. There you go. Did a good job. Buckles on their shoes. In America, quote, in America, we generally had a bit of a resistance to the supernatural in a way that European countries didn't. She explains when you came to America, you came with a fresh start. You came with a secular mindset and the idea that you were leaving the past behind.

And some of these spooky superstitions were thought of as being part of the past. That does make sense because they were like really big on ditching the old world in like the 18 and early 1900s. Yeah. You know, it wasn't just it wasn't just the Puritans. It's always fun to joke about how we were all Puritans, but that was really during the earliest element of the establishing of the Americas.

So another reason telling spooky stories never took off as a Christmas tradition in the united states was because- oh, I never thought about this- it became more firmly established as a Halloween tradition thanks to the irish and scottish immigrants- quote: that really impacted culture here, because they brought with them a concept similar to Halloween. That became for america the time for pure, the time period for ghosts.

That does make sense, because we're way more into Halloween than like anywhere else, or the concept of Halloween rather. Yeah. Other than a Christmas Carol, there is another piece of pop culture that reflects the Victorian Christmas tradition, a single line from a song written and released in 1963 by American musicians first recorded by Andy Williams. The song it's the most wonderful time of the year list.

Scary ghost stories is one of the highlights of the holiday season. Yeah, that's true. It does. I always tell scary stories on Christmas. Really? Well, I try to tell one or on Christmas Eve, I always I love holiday horror movies. I love holiday movies. I love all of it. I always try to watch something simple and very scary on Christmas Eve. OK.

Usually I end up watching an all through the house, the Tales from the Crypt episode about a killer Santa because I find it very, very scary. Yeah. Although it's unclear why the writers of the song, edward pola and george weill, included the tradition. Clito says that it's possible that the lyric is a reference to dickens, a Christmas carol quote. It's the only one, it's the only one text she notes quote.

But it's such a big deal here in the u. S and the uk and is pretty much all that americans know about Christmas: ghost stories in isolation, or maybe- sorry, I was gonna just say maybe- that the writer did tell ghost stories- yeah, yeah, when they were kids. It's not like nobody does. Yeah, I'm honestly, I never thought in context of it.

I'd never thought about the idea that Halloween killed the concept of ghost stories at Christmas for americans. But that makes so much sense. We do an entire now. It's an entire month and I'm very thankful for it because it's a great month for the podcast. We do an entire month that's all about scary stuff and spooky stuff and ghosts and goblins and witches.

So it doesn't really, we don't really, we're not really as like into Krampus and stuff. We're getting there now, you know, because people love Halloween and they love, I mean, I'm, I have a podcast, you know, that's like living proof that people love the spooky all year long. Yeah. I'd like it to be about 20 times more people, but you know, I'm happy to have every single one of you.

So that really does make sense. What was the Christmas movie growing up for your family? I don't know. It was probably One Magic Christmas. You all like to be really sad. Yeah. That's a great one. I love One Magic Christmas. Yeah. That's the good stuff. Well, we're going to go to a break real quick and we're going to come back. We're going to talk a little bit about media we've been checking out.

We're going to talk about your first experience watching Blood Rage. We're going to talk about Reddit. And then we're going to free everyone to enjoy their holiday season with four terrifying stories on Weekly Spooky every Wednesday. But first, this quick word from our sponsors. Michelle, you look like you wish you could. Do you want to throw it to the sponsors? It looks like you want to.

Okay. Do it. Do it. Go to the sponsors. It's nice to throw it to the sponsors, you know, because it's Christmas time, so we need to show you what things you need to buy, so, but uh, so for let's talk a little bit more about thanksgiving. For those out there who don't know, thanksgiving has one truly great horror film, and it's a little slasher movie from the 80s called blood rage, and Michelle had never seen blood rage before, yeah, so we watched it together over the weekend, yeah, yeah.

And what did you learn other than that? That's not cranberry sauce. That's almost all I learned. I just- and I thought it was funny that, like the, the person saying that was the killer, he's just having such a good time. Oh, he's having a great time. Well, it's the holidays, you know? You gotta unwind. So Blood Rage, for the uninitiated, it really is the, it is really kind of the ultimate Thanksgiving horror movie.

There are a few other ones, but it's really kind of the best one. Because it's just a total 80s slasher cheese thing. But it's about twin brothers who, when they were kids, one of them murders somebody horrifically and then blames the other twin. Now we fast forward to the 20 years later or 10 years later. 10 years later and they're both about 20 or 19 years old now and the brother, who is not the killer, escapes and that encourages the killer brother to decide to just start killing again because he can blame it on his brother again.

And it's just ridiculous. I mean like there's decapitations, heads being split and the effects are shockingly decent, but then the rest of the movie is very silly. Yeah, and I was so excited to show it to Michelle. Michelle and I both, like we mentioned earlier, we had kind of a tumultuous month, you know, both of us dealing with HVAC stuff. Of course, hopefully your boiler is all fixed.

Yeah. Mine, I'm still waiting to spend, you know, a lot of money because I got to get an entirely new HVAC system. But what I'm saying is, geez, Michelle, rub it in a little bit more. They were able to fix my heater. No, but but no. So we both needed a little levity. So we decided to hang out together and watch a movie, and I insisted it be blood rage, which you can totally watch for free on tubi if you're curious, but, Michelle, so what were your thoughts on on the film so far?

So you, you see this drive-in movie theater and you see these people making out, including the twins. Mom, played by louise lassiter, who was nominated for an academy award- I believe she used to be woody allen's girlfriend. She was very, very famous for a long time and now- and she's still a phenomenal actor like this movie is goofy as hell, but every time she has a serious scene she just destroys it.

She's so good. What were you thinking about the beginning? Yeah, yeah, when you see these kids and then one of them gets a hatchet and just starts hacking up this guy while he's, he's like making out with a girl, it seemed very mean and I I was just like why, all of a sudden, you know, like I would have gotten it if it was, if he like hacked up his mom and his.

Well, I mean, I wouldn't. I understand from watching. You would have thought it was good if you had done that, but I would have understood if he, if he hacked them up because his mom was like on a date with somebody, like you know, and they brought the kids and it was weird. So, like him getting out of the car- you hear that single mothers- Michelle says you're weird it.

No, it was weird, yeah, because because like the guy was like kind of like trying to come on to her and she's like my kids are in the car and and, and he's like they're sleeping, like they're not sleeping, and so traditionally the move is you go to the drive-in and the kids are always asleep by the second movie. That's the tradition.

Well, they were awake and just waiting so that they could get out and kill someone. They won: one of them wanted to kill somebody and the other one just kind of was whatever, yeah, he's just coming along, let's come with you, that's fine. And then he was surprised when his brother, who had a hatchet, murdered someone. Well, wouldn't you be surprised if someone murdered someone with a hatchet in front of you?

I don't know. I kind of got the impression that this is this kid's MO. Like he's always kind of like insane and that they should have known this was coming. I mean, that's not a poor assumption, I would say. So and then now we move forward to the future. And now the family is very, very bent. There's something weird going on where, like the, the, the brother, uh, the crazy one that's not locked up, seems to kind of be like, obsessed with his mother.

His mother is obsessed with him. Well, oh no, it's definitely a two-way street. No, no, because she announces at thanksgiving dinner that she and her boyfriend are going to get married, and all this. And then, of course, then they find out that her brother, the, the brother who they think is the killer but wasn't- has escaped, and now all bets are off and everyone starts getting just massacred, yeah it.

I thought it was sad, though, because before he escapes, um, his, the, the innocent brother who's in an institution, I guess, um, he just wanted a pepsi, yeah, just a pepsi. And he is, like, with his psychiatrist or psychologist or whoever he's with, and he has a breakthrough and realizes he didn't actually commit the murder, yeah, and so his mom comes in to visit him and does not believe it, like for a second, and I thought that was really sad.

Yeah, well, and it makes sense, like I get why, if you think about it- not that this movie makes perfect sense, but if you think about it- it makes sense why, like the, the doctor didn't go nuts trying to prove like, oh no, he's the one who did it, because the other brother has not hurt anyone else since, right, so it's clearly not like the most urgent thing, but it's something to explore.

Is like it looks like maybe where we're mistaken? Yeah, yeah, so she's kind of believing him, I. One of my favorite things about this movie is they don't show him escaping at all, they just say he's escaped and then he just like shows up with his hair slightly different than his brother, who is they're just one actor. There was no, there were no actual twins used.

There were twins used at the beginning. The two boys were twins. Um, like they definitely were, but like, yeah, in this one they were not real. They couldn't wait for them to grow up. Who has time for that? I don't know. Like for nine-year-olds to become 20, that takes like months, yeah, so what did you think once the killing started? Like, first of all, the fact that you pointed out the killer can't help himself.

He says that's not cranberry sauce four times, yeah, he just, he just loves that and he's having like the best time, I think, probably because he hasn't killed at least people. He probably kills animals all the time, I would assume yeah, um, he hasn't killed people in like 10 years, so he's just having like the best time killing people and like people he knows- like most of them are people he knows, of course- actually seem like they're friends with him.

So it's kind of sad. He's kind of weird too, Like he has a girlfriend who really wants to like fool around, but he doesn't want to have sex and he doesn't drink alcohol. Like he keeps mentioning it. Like he'd be like, I don't drink. But then he smokes a joint at one point. And like, it's just, he's a very odd duck. And I want to mention one of the things this movie does really well, I think gets really right.

And I appreciate is it takes place in an apartment complex. So like this big social circle they have is because all of these different people live in the apartment complex. So the killer is kind of able to just kind of go apartment to apartment, killing people and stuff like that, which I thought worked really well. It did. And you don't see enough.

I lived in an apartment complex kind of like that, you know, with kind of an open, a more open floor plan, but like, you know, every unit was the same and blah, blah, blah. So it was kind of like it kind of reminded me of being a kid a little bit. You know cause? I just remember like living in these apartments where you had like the stairs outside and then you had like the, the little screen doors and then a guy starts killing everybody.

Like I remember all of that, you know, just from my childhood. Yeah. So, so, and, uh, without spoiling it, darkest ending possible, right? Yeah. I, I, I just like the, the peep, the person who ends up living at the end, I was just like, oh my God, they'll never be okay again. Like ever. It's cute. You thought they were okay ever anyway.

I think it's worse now. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, it's a lot worse now. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a fair point. and it has such a pitch black ending after having a movie that like really is mostly goofy. Yeah, it really is mostly goofy. Yeah. So if you had to, so what are your final thoughts on blood rage, the quintessential Thanksgiving slasher movie?

And I'm going to warn you, Michelle next year, I'm going to show you home sweet home, which is the other Thanksgiving slasher movie. And it is substantially less good in every way. Do you remember? Remember when we were kids, there was that workout guru named body by jake. He was that. He was like: hi, I'm body by jake and I'm doing the bubble in home, sweet home.

He just plays like a psychopath who's just like ah, and it's that guy before he became famous, and he's just like killing people, like he's the killer, like it's just him being a nut job. That's the most entertaining part of the movie. The rest of the movie is very drab. Oh so, what did you think, though? Um, I liked it. Um, I thought I thought it was pretty good.

Um, and I just felt really bad about everything after watching, which is your favorite way to feel after a movie. That makes sense. I'm glad, I'm glad you enjoyed, would that? Would that be something if I, if I hit you up next year, I was like: dude, you want to watch blood rage again? Would you be like, yeah, sure, yeah, it's like a party movie kind of thing, you know.

Okay, well, I'm glad you enjoyed blood rage. I'm happy I could introduce that to you. Yeah, so and uh. And now Christmas is here. I mean, there are so many great Christmas horror options, so, but I'm gonna say one that is not a horror movie. I saw, spirited with will ferrell and ryan reynolds, phenomenal movie. It's an. It's a new adaptation of a Christmas carol, but it's totally not done in the way you're expecting.

Oh right, the one that you said you were going to go see. Yeah, really? It was so fun. It's a musical too, so highly recommend it. It's in theaters- a lot of places- and you can watch it on Apple TV. I liked it a lot, but now it's time, Michelle, for you to dig deep into your Reddit reserves. What do you have going on on Reddit?

So this month I was just basically on ask reddit all month because I don't know what happened and, um, hold on, let me turn this up a little so I can hear everything better, because I'm not looking at you. Um, so I, I it was like things, I I was just so I have some like really interesting, like comments from like ask reddit, like creepy ask reddit posts, sure so, so there was one and it's um the.

The question was: people who work at morgues or with the dead. What's the creepiest thing you've witnessed? Ah, yeah, okay, well, um, all right, yeah, Michelle brought it this month. Guys, yeah, so, So this one. So there was. This is like a person responding that from a story that his friend told him. So his friend used to work like as a single plane transport contractor.

Okay. And sometimes he and the people he worked with would carry bodies and stuff. And so one time it wasn't his friend, but like it was someone who worked with them was carrying a body and it hadn't been autopsied or prepared at all yet. And they were just taking it somewhere. And it was like wrapped and laying on the floor. That's how they do it.

No box. It's like, sorry, guys. No time to box this kid. Well, I don't. They just they were just taking it somewhere. Fun. So. Like the cancun, barbados, yeah, yeah, nice. Um, so apparently you know, like you know when you're in the air, like air pressure and gravity and all that stuff kind of mess with things a little bit. Yeah, so the corpse is in in the plane and like because of the, the lower pressure, air escapes from the corpse and then also the plane, like there was like a jostling of the plane and so it caused the body to sit up and the wrapping to fall off and then the corpse to like make us like a moan, right.

So the pilot sees this and like panics and like leaves the controls and run back and punches the corpse back down. Not my plane zombie, yeah, um, and apparently like they don't. The guy says he doesn't know how like they found out that he had done this, but I guess he had kind of damaged the guy's face or something, so so the pilot eventually had to explain what happened.

Well, and it doesn't sound like it was packaged very well to begin with. If it's wrappings could just fall off and it could sit up it well, It seems like it was kind of loosey goosey. Yeah. That's funny. You know, that reminds me of a movie you should watch called Flight of the Living Dead. It's really silly and fun. Anyway, I just it's nice whenever I get an opportunity to bring up Flight of the Living Dead.

That's terrifying, though. Yeah. I'm surprised he didn't just jump out of the plane. Then he would die. Well, they've got parachutes. Yeah, but you think, if he had time to think about parachute, he, he realized that it like wasn't alive. No, that's the problem. It's not alive, that's the problem. Oh, okay, it's undead. Oh god, I could just see. I love the.

This first instinct is to punch it in the face. Yeah, like, all right, rock and roll, yeah, what else do you have? Um, let's see, I have another one from from that same- uh, ask reddit, where there is this guy who used to be an emt, and they got on a scene where the guy had died and he was like, I guess, in the bathroom, on a toilet probably, I would assume, and it was early enough after his death, like it had just happened.

They were trying to revive him and they were trying to like manage, like to get him like in position so that they could do compressions. So it's him and, I guess, his partner, and then like a cop. So so the guy takes like the head and the partner is like at this chest and the cop goes for the legs so that they can move him, they can lift him, and it turns out the guy has a prosthetic foot and it just like comes off in the officer's hand and he just runs.

Oh, my god, that's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. These are pretty good ones, thanks, thank you. Do you have any more for us? Or is that good? Is that? I don't know? It's up to you. Uh, we'll do one more. Okay, this one isn't as scary, but the the post also should have been scary. Um, it's from, it's from ask reddit again and it's from: so, hikers of reddit, what is the strangest thing you've seen on the trails?

So, hopefully, there's this person who was on a day hike in sedona, arizona, which I don't know if you've been to, but it's very pretty. I haven't, but I know that it's like the most hippie place on earth. Maybe they claim there's a vortex there. Yeah, no, like, there's like energy healers and stuff everywhere in sedona. Oh, I mean, I've been there before and all I remember is it was really expensive.

That makes sense too. Yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful place. There's no doubt that's why they would set up that stuff there. Yeah, um, so, so right, so this this girl is on a hike in sedona with her friend who lives in the area, so he knows like all of the the like non-commercial trails and cool places to go, right, right, so they're going on this hike and it's cool because, like, not a lot of people know about it and they're hiking and she has to go to the bathroom.

So to be kind to her friend, who is shy with women going to the bathroom around him, she goes off into the bushes, far off the trail, so she can pee and she she stops at this kind of like cliff, like the edge of like a cliff, and is peeing facing the cliff and she hears this low whooshing sound and all of a sudden a red rock tour helicopter rises out of the can and catches her peeing.

Oh my God, that's funny. Yeah. And she waved. Oh, that's nice of her. Yeah. What else can you do, right? Yeah. You got me. I'll pee in. Well, thank you for diving into Reddit. I appreciate that. Michelle is our Reddit person, the person on the scene to tell us what's going on at Reddit. So before we get out of here, I wanted to give you guys a rundown of some of the new Christmas horror movies that are coming out this month, just so you can keep an eye on those.

If you're looking to watch some Christmas horror films, the first one would be the curse of Jack Frost, which came out November 1st, actually. So it's available right now. And I believe it's on to be as well as Amazon to rent. It was actually released by ITN distribution, a company I do a lot of work with. It looks really cool. It's Jack Frost, but he's murderous and evil.

So that's one to check out. December 2nd, a film that I'm really excited about, although I don't consider it really a horror movie. It's called violent night. Uh, it stars david harbour from stranger things. He played the, the, you know, the cop, the sheriff, whatever you call it. Uh, he plays santa claus and ends up uh going on like a fighting rampage against some crooks who are trying to hurt a family on Christmas eve.

Oh, and it's really great too, because he's like in the trailers. He's like he doesn't want to do it but he's like: screw it, I gotta help this family. So he's like beating them up and blowing them up and stuff. It's very ridiculous from the people who made uh john wick. So that one looks great. It comes to theaters December 2nd. I'll be there seeing it.

Another one that I'm really excited about comes out on December 9th. It's called Christmas, bloody Christmas. And that this is a straight up horror movie with Santa Claus in it. Straight up. It looks awesome. It will be in some theaters, but not very many, but it will be premiering on Shudder. The horror service that shows Joe Bob Briggs and stuff. It'll be on Shudder December 9th.

It's about Santa Claus going crazy and killing some people. So this next one, though, this one's really weird and I'm not sure I feel about it, but I'm going to check it out. This one comes out December 15th. It's called The Mean One. And it's an unofficial Grinch movie where this time the Grinch murders people. Oh. Yeah. One of the quotes that said was one way this veers is with the primary character.

audiences will recognize him as the Grinch in the movie. He is not so named. He is just the mean one. That's a good way to avoid getting sued. Yeah. So just barely really. Yeah, just barely. But yeah, so he's going to be stealing Christmas by murdering. And that's supposed to be in select theaters and maybe video on demand. I couldn't quite find the information.

So those, we have quite a few holiday horror films coming up. Yeah. So I'm excited to watch those. I'm excited to watch a Christmas story. Christmas. The official sequel to Christmas story. I've heard it's great, but I've been saving it. Is there anything you're looking forward to this holiday season? Michelle? No, that's fair. Ouch. Well, if you're looking for a classic horror movie to watch at Christmas time, I'll just mention a few of my favorites.

Silent night, deadly night, one through five. Don't open till Christmas, which is just completely out of its mind. Um, uh, Oh, uh, better watch out Christmas evil. I'm going to stop because I have a lot and it's about time we wrap this up. Uh, I want to say to everyone, please have a wonderful holiday season. I really appreciate you listening to this and listening to all of the content we release at Weekly Spooky.

I hope you enjoy the four Christmas horror stories we'll be sharing with you this year. And maybe next year I'll make Michelle write another one because everybody loved your, uh, your Merry Christmas or was a welcome to tiny Christmas, Iowa. They loved it. They loved it. So if you guys want to reach out to us, you can send us an email at weeklyspooky at gmail.com.

We'll be happy to read it on the next Monthly Spooky, which will be right before New Year's. So for now, I'm going to get out of here. Michelle, thank you again for hanging out with me.