AP Strange: 00:22

Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art. Among the misty corridors of pine, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures. Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange Show.

AP Strange: 01:08

I am your host, AP Strange. This is my show, and this week's show is brought to you by paranormal security system experts. If you are in the need of any kind of security system to alert you to the presence of ghosts within your house, They set up plenty of cameras. The paranormal security experts come in with recording devices of all kinds. And at the very least, if you die as a result of the paranormal activity in your house, will have a movie ready to go so that people will be able to see your demise as it really happened.

AP Strange: 01:47

So talk to the paranormal security experts to ensure some level of celebrity for yourself after your passing. So with that in mind- we have a wonderful guest on today's show it's a third time's a charm. Special episode where we talk about the third movie and the franchise- And this week we're getting into the found footage realm with Paranormal Activity three and my guest is the one and only Icy Sedgwick. She's a folklore writer and podcaster with the website and podcast of the same name fabulous folklore which I heartily recommend. She's a former ghost hunter.

AP Strange: 02:30

And the author of such books as rebel folklore And several dark fantasy and gothic titles- and also she has a doctorate in horror movies which I found. Absolutely astonishing and more to the point part of her PhD was looking at this movie, Paranormal Activity three. And when I came up with the idea of covering third movies in a franchise, I never dreamed that anyone would have one third movie as part of their PhD and I guess the world is full of surprises. So I'm very happy to welcome to the show Icy Seidrick. How are you doing, Icy?

Icy Sedgwick: 03:11

I'm not too bad. That was a fantastic introduction by the way.

AP Strange: 03:15

Oh thank you. Well I've been following you for some time and recently I've been really listening to your podcast and checking out Rebel Folklore and so when I saw that you had a doctorate in horror movies I was like oh man I have to have her on for a movie episode.

Icy Sedgwick: 03:37

It comes in useful for something then, hooray!

AP Strange: 03:42

There you go. So I mean, I did kind of want to start with that. What does that entail? Like what drove you to the horror movie doctorate path that you ended up on and how did this movie Paranormal Activity three work its way into it?

Icy Sedgwick: 04:04

How I got onto it started the way most things that I do did, it seemed like a good idea at the time And way back when I was doing my masters, I'd started to specialise in horror actually originally on my BA and I sort of found that there was a lot that you could say about horror in a way that perhaps other genres maybe didn't offer quite as much scope apart from perhaps science fiction. And when I did my MA I ended up looking at things like the domestic uncanny and the female character is either villain or victim. And I'll be honest with you, gender studies in horror have been massively overdone. And when I started doing my PhD, because I originally wanted to go into academia and that plan has long since sailed. I was thinking about what I wanted to actually look at and the thing that had always interested me when I did the Domestic Uncanny was the representation of the house and how haunted houses actually function and how they work in the films because obviously a lot of the time you remember I think the house or the location perhaps more than maybe the characters because some of them can be a bit forgettable, let's be honest.

Icy Sedgwick: 05:20

And I think that it basically grew out of that so over time there was various changes for various reasons but I ended up sort of setting on I want to look at how the house is represented through the actual mechanisms of cinema and I ended up choosing set design, cinematography and sound design. It's a little bit annoying that I couldn't fit editing in there as well but obviously word count and costume design would have also been interesting but again word count. And I ended up putting Paranormal Activity one, two and three in the sound design no it wasn't, it was the cinematography chapter and it felt fairly obvious to put them in there because with them being found footage so I actually slotted them in alongside the remake of The Ring and Poltergeist. I'm just trying to think, was it original Poltergeist? If anyone don't me about the fact I used the remake of The Ring because I was solely using films that had been produced in Hollywood because you've got to have some way to narrow down these films and there's so many horror films to choose from.

Icy Sedgwick: 06:27

It had to have been made after 1978 and there was reasons why I argued 1978 as well as the start of the contemporary horror film and it just felt like with the focus on technology in all of the films that they fitted together really nicely, you then talk about cinematography. And the reason I only put the first three Paranormal Activity films in was A) I'd watched the fourth one and I thought I can't watch any more of these and B) I felt that the story involved in the family themselves was quite self contained in the first three and I wasn't really sure that there was going to be anything additional offered by the later ones that wasn't already in the first three. And there's like moments in the fourth one that were quite interesting but not enough for me to be able to really get a lot out of it in terms of discussion. So again I had to narrow it down somehow and yeah so it ended up being how they used lightning and camera angles and color grading and things like that to actually represent a haunting, particularly where for the most part the ghost itself is invisible which is like the complete opposite of poltergeist.

Icy Sedgwick: 07:34

So it was quite interesting that was even the ring, it was quite interesting seeing how those ghosts well not even ghosts, this is the problem as well it's not even a ghost which is irritating because put it in and I'd written about it and then I went oh no it's a demon, what I gonna do?' So I just left it in and hoped that no one noticed and because the activity itself is depicted to be of supernatural origin I thought that that will still work as a house appears to be haunted. What it's haunted by is a different discussion entirely that I didn't really have space for.

AP Strange: 08:09

Well, I mean it's funny and maybe a little ironic where Poltergeist actually shows you entities and there are ghosts behind it, that's kind of in parapsychological terms, not what a Poltergeist is. Whereas in the Paranormal Activity movies, most of what you see is poltergeist type activity, even if it's characterized as a demon. Although I could argue in the third one that it's more of a familiar because there's a whole witchcraft angle and I think, that's kind of splitting hairs between a demon and a familiar.

Icy Sedgwick: 08:46

Yeah I think because kind of you can argue that they've enlisted the help of a demonic spirit in order to enact this particular desire for wealth and affluence and all that kind of thing on the part of the grandmother. And then obviously you can also argue that it's some kind of familiar spirit and I suppose it depends really on where you sit in terms of wider belief systems as to whether a familiar was a demonic spirit or whether it was just a spirit that you'd somehow persuaded to work with you. And I think ultimately the way that the spirit behaves does change between the three films and I think some people might read a lot into that. I would argue if I was being harsh that it also felt like whoever wrote the third one hadn't actually rewatched the first two so that's almost like a bit of a plot hole because someone's just not being consistent with what they themselves have written and obviously I think it is a different writer and because it's also set before the other ones you can kind of get away with a little bit of a change I think in tone.

Icy Sedgwick: 09:54

But I sort of feel like a demon would sort of make more sense for me than a familiar simply because the collection of the child which we see in the second film, the first born male, would make more sense as a result of a demonic pact rather than perhaps a familiar. That seems a little bit excessive for something a familiar might ask for. But again the fact that there's slippage between the two just kind of shows that the nature of Toby's sort of irrelevant and he's just really there to kind of push the plot forward. He's basically a massive McGuffin more than anything which is a weird thing to do in a found footage film.

AP Strange: 10:34

Right, yeah I mean because he operates as like an imaginary friend to the little girl the whole time. But as far as continuity goes between the movies, was a little confused about that because it seems like at the beginning it's in the current timeline, like nowadays and they find the box of videotapes. I half expected that they'd be going back to that timeline but is that timeline supposed to be like during the second movie or after?

Icy Sedgwick: 11:05

It's during so where it sort of fits as far as I can remember is you have at the beginning of the third film to find the videotapes but that fits in the second film sort of before the transfer the demonic entity from Christie to the other sister so it sort of fits in there but you're right it's weird that it then gets the other then sat through all of this video content but it doesn't go back to them again and then the continuity jumps the shark even more for episode four where again there's even less sense between well why would this character do this and then go there and you sit there going I'm confused am I supposed to be? Was this supposed to not actually have any continuity between them or again am I just splitting hairs when that's possibly not the point? But I do think with something like these kind of stories if you're going to try and build a universe and a franchise it helps if there's actually a through line that you can follow because they do a good job with the first and the second one where the second one sort of actually starts out, the first half is like before the first film and then the events of the first film happen and then the rest of the second film, that works quite well and the jumping around in time is quite effective but yeah then the third one it's like which one is it?

Icy Sedgwick: 12:23

Pick one!

AP Strange: 12:24

It doesn't

Icy Sedgwick: 12:25

really bother me you want me to.

AP Strange: 12:28

Yeah, for listeners, the third one takes place in 1988, which I thought was a little interesting because now we're back in a time before more accessible like digital recording. The guy has like VHS camcorders basically, which is a little that kind of pulled me out of the movie a little bit because despite their efforts and I guess this would be a fun thing to ask you about as far as costume design and setting and props go. It didn't feel 1988 to me for a lot of it. I wasn't buying it and then to the point where when something very 80s popped up, I'd be like, Why are they? Oh, right, it's the 80s.

AP Strange: 13:12

Like I kept forgetting, which it takes out the big wireless phone. Because then I had to think, I'm like, did they have the cordless house phones in '88? Like to me, that sounded, felt like more of a 90s thing but I really, so yeah, don't know how you felt about the kind of props and setting and putting it in that time period.

Icy Sedgwick: 13:38

I think I would agree with you. A lot of it does feel more early to mid 90s which again, it's possibly splitting hairs a little bit. I think what I liked about the move to an earlier period, it's irrelevant of when it is, it's an analog period so the cameras in this film, obviously the cameras in the first two films are also tangible but the film itself, so the actual material of the recording physically exists, it's a tangible product. And I quite like the fact that the way that the cameras operate are really limited compared to what the digital ones can do. So for example the bit where Dennis mounts the video camera on the oscillating fan so we can then get the from one side of the room to the other which they use really well.

Icy Sedgwick: 14:25

They use the same gag sort of twice and the first one works really well and the second one it's like you've already done that gimmick, always find something else to do. And the fact that you do have a mixture of fixed cameras and handheld cameras I think also works quite well although they do that in the first one as well. The difference I think is when you look at the use of framing, because Dennis is a videographer an actual job, his framing is so much better than the guy in the first film, Maika, where he's constantly cutting people's heads off out of the shot and everything because he's clearly just someone who's hired a video camera or even bought one but he doesn't know what he's doing. Whereas Dennis's framing and everything and use of the camera is much more assured which is good but I think you then end up obviously quite frustrated and this is a limitation of found footage anyway where like you hear a noise behind the camera and you have to wait for the person to turn around with the camera to see what made the noise by which point there is a chance that you might have lost interest in what made the noise if you're me.

Icy Sedgwick: 15:30

But then there's also the fact that you do think would you walk around the house with a handheld camera? Possibly not and there's one scene in the film that I remember actually shouting at in my head anyway because I was in the cinema and it's the bit where you suddenly have this shot of Mike, not Mike, it's Dennis in the third one, reviewing all of the footage. So he's got all these TVs and he's watching all the footage. I'm like well who's filming you? Because I can't remember if there's even any time codes on the film at that point because obviously the time codes are there to sort of obviously show this is being filmed, this is all real footage.

Icy Sedgwick: 16:06

But I'm like well who would be filming you watching the footage? That's just weird and it really irritated us because it was this weird moment where like the filmmakers themselves intruded in the film and while that scene sort of shows the arguments and so on between Dennis and his partner, it doesn't really add anything to the film itself and I'm like so all you've done is you've just broken your own conceit that this is genuine found footage which also begs the question who edited together? And I think that in and itself is also a problem with found footage anyway, the fact that who cut this together because it's rarely, I don't know, an hour and a half in real time of something that happened which would feel a little bit more realistic. I'm thinking did Grave Encounters try and do it that it was a genuine period of time? Possibly, possibly but Paranormal Activity three is over like the course of a few weeks and it's like so who's edited all the bits out in between and what was happening in those?

Icy Sedgwick: 17:10

And that's the bit that always frustrates me with found footage.

AP Strange: 17:15

Yeah, I mean especially when you get to the end because like spoiler alert, he dies. So that last bit of footage, who took that and put it together with the rest of the stuff? Suppose he had an assistant that quit, that ran off and quit, he was filming part of it too and he was with the little girl doing the Bloody Mary game in the bathroom and that's where the activity really kicks up. And that's one of those moments that makes me think where again takes me out of the movie with found footage where I mean no matter how dedicated you are to capturing the stuff on film, if you're trying to run away from something terrifying like being trapped in a bathroom and like crazy sounds of furniture being thrown at you, it's like other than not wanting to break the camera by dropping it, like I can't see continuing to hold it up to your eye and filtering everything that's going on. It's a bit of a stretch.

Icy Sedgwick: 18:17

Yeah and I think that's where the second film overcomes that in a really elegant way because the second film it's all the security cameras so they're all fixed cameras and then the film's kind of cycling through the cameras. Now it does play with this a little bit because at one point we do actually still follow some movement up the stairs and we've never seen the cameras in that order before so there is obviously some editorial control going on there. But because of the fact that they're all passive cameras that are constantly recording all of the time, you at least sort of think well you could cut that footage together based on what's actually happening but yeah with a handheld camera you know and I think the one time that the duo abandoned the camera is at the beginning when there's the earthquake in the third one and obviously the rush to get out of the house and the camera falls over and that's where you see a little bit of dust describing the outline of this invisible figure. But the rest of the time you just want to go put the camera down and just leave, it's fine.

Icy Sedgwick: 19:17

It's not a problem, you can clear back on your insurance, don't worry about it. So I find the incessant need to film in some ways weirdly it's quite predictive of the way that people are now, the fact that the minute something happens in the street the first thing people do is get their phones out to film it rather than intervene and or help. So maybe paranormal activity just predicted how camera phones were gonna work or maybe that's given it too much credit.

AP Strange: 19:47

Well yeah, I mean I tend to think that prior to that you had the Blair Witch Project was kind of like the original And that made more sense because they're trying to film a documentary and then you have everything sequentially because they basically have one camera. So there's no editing involved, it's just like turning it on, turning it off. It's all the bits they recorded and I think it was fairly convincing. But yeah, to your point that made me wonder in this movie if it was 1988 and there was a camera sitting on a table or a tripod or an oscillating fan while you're hanging out, you'd probably be pretty put off by it. Because even with just security cameras, I feel like within my lifetime I've seen those proliferate where like I would notice them once in a while at the gas station there would be one pointed at the front door.

AP Strange: 20:41

One, you know, and nowadays like everywhere you go there's just cameras on everything and everybody has one in their pocket, you know. You're pretty much being surveilled all the time but I feel like it's a little weird how easily people just adjust to being on camera all the time in the movie. I guess the children might not know any better but the wife has her reservations well actually are they married? Wasn't I couldn't didn't think.

Icy Sedgwick: 21:08

It's not clear I think I don't think they're married.

AP Strange: 21:13

Yeah because he's he's not the father of the children so yeah right okay. Didn't

Icy Sedgwick: 21:20

know there Yeah you never find out, I can't remember if you find out what happens to their dad but then I was thinking the babysitter comes around and she seems perfectly okay with the idea of there being cameras everywhere and you sort of think would you be though or would you just think that this guy who's hired is a bit weird?

AP Strange: 21:35

Right, I would think he was a freak if you know, I already think that like my day job has me go into people's homes sometimes or into businesses but in homes I've seen cameras on the weirdest places in people's homes or audio recording devices and it's just like, what are you recording in your house? Like that's so weird. It really puts you off, know. But yeah, I can imagine in the 80s it would have really stood out because I feel like as a kid in the 80s, noticed when cameras would appear places and you'd be like, oh, I'm on camera here. You're very cognizant of it.

AP Strange: 22:20

Nowadays people just ignore it but it did seem like a bit of an odd thing and yeah if he were the babysitter you would wonder what he was up to.

Icy Sedgwick: 22:30

I suppose I can't remember if they tell her what it's for because I've got a memory of the scene in the film where she pretends to be a ghost by putting a sheet over her head and then the figure which again breaks the whole point of the film appears behind the babysitter under the sheet. So they've got this child sized figure that appears behind her which obviously then appears and disappears during one of the oscillating fan movements. But then we've also seen from the beginning of the film when the dust falls over the figure that the figure's like adult sized and then when one of the kids runs into the figure upstairs she looks up and again implies that the figure's adult sized by the eyeline matching.

AP Strange: 23:16

Right.

Icy Sedgwick: 23:16

But then in this, it is one of the more effective scenes, one with the child size figure behind the babysitter, why would the figure suddenly change size?

AP Strange: 23:27

Well I guess if you're a demon you might be able to do that.

Icy Sedgwick: 23:30

Well probably but it just seems like it I suppose you don't know if it's unpretending to be one of the kids or not which would make sense.

AP Strange: 23:39

Right.

Icy Sedgwick: 23:39

But again it does kind of make you think what exactly is this haunting the house because of the weird way that it's then able to change size and shape apparently?

AP Strange: 23:50

Yeah, that's an interesting question, I hadn't thought of that. I mean, it seemed like the, I can't remember the young girls names unfortunately but one of the girls at least given the getting out of bed to play with her invisible friend Toby and I wonder if he had the power to convince her to put the sheet on and then kind of apport her to the bed.

Icy Sedgwick: 24:19

I mean that would work, I think it's Christie who's the one who can see him.

AP Strange: 24:24

Yeah, that sounds right.

Icy Sedgwick: 24:26

And I can't remember the name of the other one and So I think it's Christie who seems to have the better relationship with him. But then it's also really weird, why would this creature be haunting their house if it's trying to claim the firstborn son and neither of them are sons? Is it just going to hang around their entire lives until one of them finally produces a son which obviously one of them does in the second film? So there's quite a lot of narrative inconsistencies in it and I think the way that they refer to the events of the third one, I think it's in the first one, she of mentions about you know remembering being haunted as a kid or something. So I think that The Habitat has tried to address that with a prequel but it still doesn't necessarily make any sense.

AP Strange: 25:23

Well I mean I guess it would explain why it's a multi generational thing because the entity is holding out for that son unless it just took Dennis as kind of like a son-in-law as a substitute temporarily or whatever you know.

Icy Sedgwick: 25:42

Yeah, it's possible I suppose.

AP Strange: 25:44

Yeah, yeah I mean that brings to mind another question that I had for you because it seems like as a fiction writer, understand you have several stories in dark fantasy and gothic tales and things like that. Is it interesting to you this kind of genre and trying to write workarounds for this because it almost seems to me like in these movies, not necessarily paranormal activity, but in a lot of found footage movies, there has to be some amount of improvising. It doesn't seem terribly scripted sometimes. And it seems like there's always has to be some kind of hackneyed way to explain either the cameras or to do exposition for things that you couldn't have on camera. So I wonder as a fiction writer too, what are your thoughts on actually writing one of these movies and how these ones hold up under those circumstances?

Icy Sedgwick: 26:46

I mean, found footage automatically suffers from the thing I mentioned earlier about who's the editor and the way that the footage is put together has always been intentionally cut in that particular way which means somebody has made decisions. Why are you including this bit but not say that part? So it's already fraught with problems even from a storytelling point of view. And I think that's where it's really interesting in the first and the second films in particular where they'll say like day one, day two, day 10, day 14 or whatever and it's the fact that you have massive gaps of time between the first ones. So it might be say like day one and then day seven where nothing's happened in between and then it starts to ramp up so it starts to become like more and more frequent and then it's several times within the same day.

Icy Sedgwick: 27:35

That works really well with film where you can obviously just put a title card up and say it's whichever day it is. That would be really, I mean you could do that in fiction writing as well but I think the problem is you then start thinking well what was going on in the bit in between, why has that been left out? So I think you immediately have to then either completely ignore that and hope that the audience doesn't ask the question which is one strategy and that's sort of the strategy that paranormal activity goes for or you then have to invent a reason like Blair Witch where they're going to turn the camera off to conserve battery or whatever. So you've got a genuine reason why it's essentially almost being cut by them themselves which I think in some ways makes more sense. But I think trying to work out like why are there cameras in the first place is obviously going to be a problem and trying to also explain the activity to a degree as well because you need to have a satisfying explanation for what it is.

Icy Sedgwick: 28:38

What's really funny is I remember there was a rip off film came out, Paranormal Entity, which was also kind of based on a film that had come out a lot earlier that had Barbara Hershey in it or was that just the entity? Might have been. And with this one they actually played with the idea of it being an incubus, so the thing that had been invited into their life because the mother had lost her husband and she was trying to contact him by herself doing ouija boards in the living room and then that invited this thing into the house and the son starts filming the activity because it's really weird and he wants a record of it. But because of the age of him and his interest towards the supernatural, it kind of makes sense why you would then record all of this content and why you would record what's going on. And I think that's the bit that really makes the difference between whether found footage works or doesn't is what is the reason for someone filming it.

Icy Sedgwick: 29:36

If you're trying to make a documentary that's perfectly good excuse for why you would have the footage whereas just yeah something weird is happening around the house so I'm going to film it. I suppose nowadays it would be easier to do because of the fact and I think this is why Paranormal Activity four perhaps makes more sense because it uses like cameras on phones but also like webcams and things like that as well so that it takes into account all of the cameras you automatically have in your house and that works quite well but yeah, do think that's the biggest issue is coming up with a motivation for the characters to be filming and then trying to explain the gaps in time as well.

AP Strange: 30:16

Right, yeah and I mean in this case in paranormal activity three they set up the camera in the bedroom because they're going to have sex on camera. Yeah. And then the earthquake happens. So that's kind of approach to as the inciting incident for capturing things on film there. But I wonder, have you ever seen the VHS movies?

AP Strange: 30:44

They're like B slash H, they're all they're like anthology style basically and there are three or four short films that were made all by different filmmakers, but they're all found footage. So these people get really creative with why there would be a camera like in one of them somebody has the glasses with the camera built into it.

Icy Sedgwick: 31:05

Oh yeah.

AP Strange: 31:06

Lens, yeah and there's some that are video chats just like this, the whole thing is that, you know, it's of interesting, they're a little bit cerebral and creepy for my liking, saw the first one I don't remember if I watched any of the others but I think I watched the second one too, It was a little much. I'm not the biggest on pound footage but

Icy Sedgwick: 31:30

I think that's why it's not strictly found footage but I really liked Host because that one came out during the first lockdown in The UK and it's all done as these people who've come on Zoom to do a seance and obviously things go horribly wrong but what I liked about it was the way that obviously there was a good reason for why they were all on a Zoom call and it was because we're in lockdown so nobody could go out and see anyone. So the actual context for release actually became the same context for the film, it was really cool. But then all the weird random features that Zoom had built in like that thing where you can turn the masks on so if it detects a face it'll put a mask on the person. They built things like that into the film so obviously then you'll have a character talking like a human character and then you suddenly see one of the masks moving around in the background implying Zoom's picked up a face and stuff. So that one, while it's not strictly phone footage, I feel actually worked quite well because of the fact that again the film, there's no edits in it so the film run time is like how long this event actually happened, or well happened, as I quote, because of the fact that obviously it then remove that invisible editor problem because of the fact it was just recorded by Zoom and I think that's the I mean when you think about it we used to have the epistolary I can't pronounce that properly but you know the novel based on letters much like Dracula where it's all like sections of people's diaries and manifests and all that kind of thing.

Icy Sedgwick: 33:07

And Again you always have well you don't know who's left what information out, who's included these letters and not others and things like that. So I think there's always been a tendency in storytelling to try to play with the format a little bit and I think that's all found footages. Just sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but isn't it interesting that most found footage tends towards either horror or sci fi like you don't really get like a musical found footage thank god?

AP Strange: 33:33

Not yet.

Icy Sedgwick: 33:36

Oh God, I've just heard that happen by saying it, haven't I?

AP Strange: 33:39

Yeah, you did. Somebody's gonna take that idea and run with it. Yeah, no, that's a really interesting point that I hadn't considered but you're right. Mean even like Frankenstein is like that too, where it's a series of journal entries and letters and yeah. Yeah, it's a super interesting way to consider found footage, which gives it a little bit more legitimacy than perhaps I was giving it before so.

Icy Sedgwick: 34:07

The one difference between the two though I think is with like the ones based on like let the writing and journal writing is you then have the unreliable narrator so you have no idea if this person's writing what happened. It's like is that actually what happened or is it their perception of what happened? Whereas with found footage because of the fact that it's relying so heavily on this is what the person filmed, there's that inherent we should believe what we see, we should believe media which is almost a more dangerous message I think where it's trying to go oh the camera doesn't lie and it's all empirical truth because it's what's being filmed and I think that's kind of where the two of them then diverge a little bit but you're like well the camera can also be an unreliable narrator because it depends what someone's pointing it at.

AP Strange: 34:51

So

Icy Sedgwick: 34:51

if you're pointing it in one direction and everything's happening behind it, the camera at that point is pointless. So it is a bit of a funny one I think but I think because found footage is trying to play with that nature of what is reality and what is not I guess, it's just not always done in that much of a high brow kind of way.

AP Strange: 35:11

Right, yeah and to your point it is a little bit more dangerous with like trust your eyes and not the narrator because you know how many people post orbs online or videos that are easily explainable but then can't be talked out of the supernatural qualities of them. Yeah, a lot of people just can't have it explained to them that dust can look like that or a spider web will look that way if it's close to the lens.

Icy Sedgwick: 35:40

And I think you then start getting into the realms of even deep fakes and things like that. It's like to what extent can you actually believe what's in front of you and to what extent should you believe what's in front of you. So I think the fact fiction films are actually exploring these ideas I think is one of the reasons why horror is a bit more interesting than other genres and horror usually reacts to things a lot quicker probably because it's faster to make a low budget horror horror film than it would be to make some like three part epic that takes like two years per film. You can't really react to the social conditions very quickly but with horror you can. I mean I remember during Trump's first term, it was before he'd even finished office the first time around, there was already a collection of essays investigating Trumpian horror and I was fascinated that that had already become a thing.

Icy Sedgwick: 36:33

The fact that such was the impact that this was already being explored academically through horror within the span of four years which was quite fascinating how quickly it moved really.

AP Strange: 36:45

Yeah I mean you think that these are things that are often considered in retrospect when you could see the effects, but things have accelerated in our modern world with the technology we have and how mad everybody is these days. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I I wanted to mention this. It just occurred to me while we were talking, but I think the worst found footage one I've ever seen is I don't know if you've seen it before, but it's called Apollo eighteen.

AP Strange: 37:19

It's found footage on the moon.

Icy Sedgwick: 37:21

Oh, no.

AP Strange: 37:25

There's like weird bug creatures on the moon, like attacking the astronauts, and it's like the NASA feed camera. There's like one inside the capsule and one outside on the moon. Absolutely. It

Icy Sedgwick: 37:38

just didn't need to be made.

AP Strange: 37:41

Didn't need to be made. And then they play with the conceit that you're gonna think it's a real film at the end of it because I mean I think that's one difference between Blair Witch and the later found footage is with the Paranormal Activity movies, don't think they're trying to convince anybody that this is real found footage. That's just how the plot plays out. With Blair Witch, they did a huge publicity stunt where they were trying to say this really was footage from a failed documentary of these people that went missing and nobody ever found them. So there was this whole mystique behind it and there's still to this day people believe that about that movie.

Icy Sedgwick: 38:18

Well they made the whole second film off the back of that and I think this is where Blair Witch couldn't be made now because I think the way social media and the internet itself works, I think can you imagine if somebody tried to put that film at the number of the weird true crime TikTokers who are like oh we're going to go and solve this crime' they would 100% be crawling those woods looking for people who'd gone missing who actually hadn't. Well,

AP Strange: 38:44

have though, that's what I'm saying is the area where they filmed it was in Connecticut, not too far from me and you're not allowed to go there anymore. It's all become private property and fenced off because too many people have gone in there looking. Even though the film was set in New Jersey, people found out that it was actually Connecticut where it was filmed, but then also believed that it was real somehow and have gone in there looking for stuff.

Icy Sedgwick: 39:08

I mean like I think that you would think the interviews with the actors might have helped but I know the second film though the whole conceit of that was it then became about the mystique that had grown up about the first film so it gets quite self referential which I think worked quite well but I don't understand why they want to reboot it. It's like no just leave it, you're not going to be able to replicate it and quite frankly you gave me motion sickness with the first one so I've got no interest in watching another one and yeah, just can you come up with a new idea please?

AP Strange: 39:40

That would

Icy Sedgwick: 39:41

be quite nice.

AP Strange: 39:43

I think about a

Icy Sedgwick: 39:44

lot of films though to be honest.

AP Strange: 39:46

Yeah, mean there isn't a whole lot of creativity going on. There's not as much as I'd like to see, that's not the stuff that gets green lit. But yeah, that did present a problem for me because with found footage, I'm often if I'm watching a movie watching it with my wife and she'll get the motion sickness effect from that right away. That and flashing lights, she has a real hard time with. I have to be strategic about when I watch my movies, if it's gonna include those elements.

AP Strange: 40:18

But yeah, yeah, I mean, that's all interesting stuff to consider. But in relation to your podcast and your blog, I was kind of interested in exploring a little bit of the folkloric aspects behind the plots in these movies. Cause I mean, a lot of these are more modern kinds of tropes. Mean, the first one, the Ouija board plays prominently in it, which I think only really became a thing after The Exorcist came out. This is the origin of that.

AP Strange: 40:51

But you have a whole lot of the demonic possession and then as we talked about a little bit, have this coven and witch cult sort of background going on in the third one that you don't, I feel like that's a hard left turn at the end of the movie that I wasn't really expecting.

Icy Sedgwick: 41:06

Yeah just a bit.

AP Strange: 41:07

Yeah yeah I don't know if you wanted to talk at all about some of the kind of like folklore roots of some of these ideas you know, it's kind of, would you consider it folklore or more modern pop culture tropes?

Icy Sedgwick: 41:25

I tend to take the view that whatever becomes popular and talked about by people can intersect with folklore. So I think that you can still talk about things like for example Ouija boards because of the superstitions that grow up around them, they sort of become contemporary folklore rather than anything else. Now I can talk about Ouija boards for hours and it fascinates me when you actually look into the history of them and where they came from and how they were essentially developed supposedly as this communication device with the other side, how people have then associated that with something evil and demonic. And this is one of the things that I get deeply irritated about by American horror because you don't get this in British horror in the same way and that's the immediate assumption that anything supernatural has to be a demon. And it honestly drives me absolutely mad watching any American ghost hunting program because it's like immediately oh it's demons, oh it's dark this, oh it's dark anything and you just think but there's not actually really a precedent for that in a lot of supernatural discussions.

Icy Sedgwick: 42:37

Whereas in Britain a ghost is a ghost is a ghost is a ghost generally speaking. You get obviously different flavors of ghosts and so on which like is it a politegeist, is it a grey lady, is it this, is it that and so on. But generally speaking the demonic and the Christian element of it is missing and there was a fantastic article that I read as part of my research because one of the other films I looked at in the seventh chapter was the Amityville Horror and it was again that attitude of oh it's the entrance to hell, oh it's demonic blah blah blah And it's like yes but if you actually look at like The Sixth Sense on the other hand, to me that's way creepier. The dead are just everywhere and there's no religious overtones in The Sixth Sense at all, It's just these people haven't moved on and I think that there is this sort of sudden jump in the early 2000s even in Prognusburg nor Amityville but in the early 2000s there's this jump towards the demonic and obviously part of that does go back to The Exorcist and Ouija boards and so on but I think what I want people to remember about Ouija boards is in the 60s it actually outsold Monopoly, that's how popular it was.

Icy Sedgwick: 43:47

I want to say it was in 1964, it was more popular than any other board game and that's how people saw it. Yes there was a priest I think in the Vatican who tried to portray it as this demonic thing in like 1919 and everyone just ignored him and basically took The Exorcist to change people's mind about it and this such is the power of media. It's annoying because you sort of think if it weren't for The Exorcist would people still see them as just a piece of cardboard with letters on it? And as someone who used to do ghost hunts and so on, we used to frequently get ouija boards out and you'd get people who wouldn't even touch them, there wouldn't be anywhere near them, they were convinced that a demon was going to follow them home and you're like oh don't flatter yourself, I don't think you're that interesting to the demonic somehow.

AP Strange: 44:36

And

Icy Sedgwick: 44:37

I mean I did a talk about spiritualism at the castle in Newcastle and one of the guys at work actually made is this massive like A2 sized ouija board on the laser cutter so it's and I'll be honest, the freakiest thing about it is we'll put it in the loft and now I've no idea where it's gone. However if you saw the state of the loft you'd understand how easily it would be for somebody to go missing in You could potentially lose a person in there. It is a bit busy shall we say. But I got this ouija board out and passed it round and this one woman just wouldn't touch it because she was so convinced it was evil and I'm like it's literally plywood with letters laser cut into it. You know, I don't know how else to convince you that it's just a piece of wood.

Icy Sedgwick: 45:22

So I think the way that they have repositioned ouija boards as these evil things the ouija films don't help and they're also dreadful but the general sort of assumption that oh it must be evil' do find a bit unhelpful because you sort of think well first of all thinking oh it's going to contact something demonic' is predicated on you believing in anything demonic I think because if you don't have that as part of your belief system it's sort of irrelevant and I think if you do use Ouija boards, there's also the inherent problem with them of a lot of the time people are trying to contact the dead from an era where mass literacy wasn't a thing. How could Ouija boards spell any messages out? And there's just things like that so I think that the films using them tap into that cultural fear of Ouija boards rather than the historical reality of them where they were actually just these popular things that people had in their homes But I think with the other sort of slightly folkloric, well actually the only other slightly folkloric thing would be this coven and I think again it's the way that oh you're doing something negative therefore it must be witchcraft' and it's like yeah but that falls slightly more towards what people thought witches were doing historically rather than what people might have actually been doing are two separate things.

Icy Sedgwick: 46:56

But I think that this idea of essentially selling a child in exchange for something else, I don't know if I can actually remember any cases that have come up because generally speaking if it's a familiar the witch is feeding the familiar on her own blood, why would she then need to hand over a baby? It doesn't actually make sense. So again it feels like that kind of sensationalism and feeding into popular phase about witches rather than anything that's actually in the historical record.

AP Strange: 47:29

Right, I mean, think you do find some support for that in witch hunters manuals and stuff like that, witch finders and yeah, I mean, that's and I think that's an important point to make too is when you're talking about like witchcraft and demonology, I thought it was funny that Dennis sends his coworker friends to the library to get a book on demonology and he comes back with one that just says demonology right across the top of it. I'm like, so is that the one that was written by King James or is it? Probably not, right? That's not the most accessible tome. But you have to bear in mind that people that called themselves demonologists historically or witch finders or this kind of thing were generally on behalf of the church and running kind of a pet propaganda campaign and very biased in their views.

AP Strange: 48:25

So if they weren't representing what people actually did, they were representing what what was convenient for them to portray about people at the time.

Icy Sedgwick: 48:35

I think a lot of it also feeds into human nature because if you're living in a time where germ theory hasn't been explained yet and you don't necessarily understand where say sickness comes from or any I mean to be fair there's some illnesses that they still don't understand. And you know if someone comes along and says to you oh this thing is being caused by witches' es. I mean, look how much people believe conspiracy theories now and at least witches kind of if you're living in that context would make more sense rather than oh, you've you've got this illness because of five gs or something like that. You can see why people would go oh yeah actually that makes sense, that explains that otherwise inexplicable thing. So I think sometimes we need to sort of potentially cut people a little bit of slack in earlier centuries ago.

Icy Sedgwick: 49:28

Well you know you had like understood less but we also have access to the internet and people understand even less again so it's not necessarily an educational problem. But I think as well it's the fact that there's other elements at play so if you're going to accuse somebody of witchcraft how much people are doing that because they genuinely believe someone's a witch and how much it's just expedient to make the accusation because for example you want their land and you need to get rid of them then you know it's sort of, I mean I think of it, I was reading in Tabitha Stanmore's book about cunning folk that occasionally it might even be made if a husband want to get rid of his wife he could accuse her of witchcraft to get rid of her easily because obviously divorce wasn't a thing so as easily anyway unless you're Henry VIII. So I think it's one of those things where there will be lots of reasons why somebody might make a witchcraft accusation that actually has nothing to do with whether or not people genuinely thought they were making pacts with satan. And the other issues that I have as well and this is the thing when you look at english folklore in particular but sort of widely as well, the devil often comes across as being a bit cartoonish, I'm not gonna lie.

Icy Sedgwick: 50:41

So there's all these legends where for example, he's been walking across the landscape because he's giant and he's carrying stones in an apron and one of the strings snaps so the rocks end up scattered all over the ground and usually he has a temper tantrum and throws one of them and then it explains why there's a weird shaped rock in a strange location or he's forever building bridges overnight for people to try and steal their soul and he just keeps getting outfoxed by people or he gets into some kind of throwing contest with a giant and again ends up losing and has a tantrum and throws something and the devil doesn't come across actually as particularly scary in a lot of these stories. When you then get to the witch trials and oh the devil made me do this and it's like this the same the same guy?

AP Strange: 51:27

That's beyond And it's funny too because you have there's a real charm to British devil You actually have nicknames for him too, little nicknames and things as opposed to puritanical and Orthodox Catholic American Satan, evangelicals over here and anybody of a strong Christian persuasion in America has Satan as just an invisible, egregoric evil that's always tempting everybody. Where in England, he's kind of like just a jolly nature spirit in a way, in a lot of the folktales and things. It's almost like two different entities.

Icy Sedgwick: 52:20

I think my favorite depiction of the devil was actually in a cartoon God the Devil and Bob where God was voiced by James Garner and the devil was voiced by Alan Cumming.

AP Strange: 52:33

Okay. And

Icy Sedgwick: 52:35

I can't remember who did the voice above and the general premise of the cartoon was that God was like oh my God I've made such a mess of this I'm gonna have to just like destroy everything and start again. But the devil quite likes things the way that they are so he ends up in this weird situation where he has to try and help Bob, this one human, convince God not to destroy humanity because obviously the devil's trying to cover his own back and it being Alan Cumming he's fabulous in every episode. I really liked it because of the fact that it showed a little bit more of the trickster element of the devil without necessarily having to have all the satanic overtones and I think that possibly fits in a little bit more with I mean obviously there's stories from the witch trials you know if these things were true and there weren't confessions obtained under torture where the devil doesn't come across well at all but at the same time there's still that element that you're looking at these women who are usually really poor, they're in awful economic conditions, they've got no recourse to anything to change their situation.

Icy Sedgwick: 53:40

So why wouldn't they believe this man who turns up and promises them riches if they'll do this that and the other? And you sort of think is that not any different from, I don't know, a tech bro who decides oh yes I'm going to invest all of my money in bitcoin? Is it really that different? So I think it is funny looking at the difference between the two types of devil. If you've got a devil with a lowercase d or satan but that's where I think like the TV series Lucifer did quite a good job of humanizing the devil because if you think about it you know the devil I don't think he necessarily wanted the job you know what I mean?

AP Strange: 54:21

So

Icy Sedgwick: 54:22

you do then sort of think you know how would you react to a job that you'd had foisted on you that you weren't really that keen on? You might not be that pleased about it.

AP Strange: 54:31

And that yeah I mean this is a theme that comes up and goes in and out of fashion over the centuries and I find that in Europe and throughout Europe like when I'm looking for old occult books I'm occasionally finding like these little satires and like fun stories that French writers wrote or German writers wrote that are about the devil like just trying to to get by or or a devil anyway.

Icy Sedgwick: 54:56

And a lot of the time it also comes down to the fact that the humans just didn't read the small print. So it's like read the Ts and Cs people and you'll be fine.

AP Strange: 55:04

Yeah, well it's like the classic Faust, know, so yeah, yeah, right. Doctor. Faustus. Yeah, well, don't know that that's so fun to think about because yeah, you're right, like over here, I live in the Northeast, so I'm a little bit insulated from like Bible Belt and Rust Belt and Midwestern types of like evangelical hardcore Christianity, or at least what they consider Christianity. Don't think many there's a whole lot of Christians in this country that I don't think are Christian in their behavior but yeah I mean I live in an area where they would consider us a bit elitist I guess because there's a lot more atheists and agnostics here and I'm grateful for that- but it is funny to compare.

AP Strange: 55:59

My home country to yours. Looking at the phone tells and- talking to friends I have over there where the day they don't have this kind of. This heavy religious overtone dumped on them all the time you know.

Icy Sedgwick: 56:14

It's funny because we are ostensibly a Church of England country but for most people their only interaction with churches will be like village fairs or I mean I've found that one of the few places that you can find to sit down in a city center will be the local church or churchyard which is quite nice and because I think we're such a wonderfully diverse country despite what our prime minister thinks. I think because of the fact that you then have lots of different faiths or just quite happily existing alongside one another, you then don't really necessarily have that sort of umbrella of like religious oh my god you have to believe this' and I think because also I suppose the difference is our Christianity kind of evolved beyond the puritans because obviously Charles II came in called the merry monarch everyone was like oh yeah no we are allowed to have fun, cool. And obviously know Protestantism has evolved over the years in a way that I think it's gone in a different direction in The States and I think it's easier I think in this country for people to just not really know what they believe or to not believe at all and that's fine.

Icy Sedgwick: 57:32

It's not really a thing. I mean I might say facetiously that a lot of people in this country, their religion will be sport but that's fine.

AP Strange: 57:43

Well there is something to do that you know like football is kind of a ritual in itself you know.

Icy Sedgwick: 57:48

Oh god very much so and so I don't know I just sort of feel like because we've also got this kind of interest in this kind of quaint almost England that never was as well so you've got people sort of obviously having an interest in old folk customs and stuff like that. I think that periodically you do get a sense of kind of little bits of fragments of kind of things kind of pop up. I won't say paganism because that's ridiculous because you'd have to go back essentially to the vikings were the last pagans who invaded Britain and you're looking at like the seventh or eighth century for that but I think you do at least get fragments of other ways of seeing the world pop through every now and then which is always healthy I think. And I think also it just depends on how people approach the matter of belief and I think even when you get sort of things like new age spirituality and so on I think is perceived differently now. So I think it's easier to believe what you want and I think we've always got a sense in Britain of like, your nose out of other people's business, I think that helps as well.

AP Strange: 59:04

Yeah, yeah. But it's certainly different and I'm perpetually embarrassed by how people behave over here. And more and more so as time goes on, just gets worse and worse. But yeah, and that but I mean, when we were talking about the demonic stuff earlier too, blows my mind because you nailed it right on, you hit the nail right on the head when you said that it presupposes a belief in demons and a Christian cosmology which a lot of people just don't have. I think a lot of people are basically agnostic all the time and maybe like nominally Christian and then you introduce the idea of demons to them and they're like terrified, which is really strange to me because it's not occupying your thoughts often.

AP Strange: 59:56

I mean, could see terrorizing somebody that's reading the Bible every day by telling them that demons are gonna come and get them, but then again, people aren't as susceptible because they feel insulated, they feel safe because they they're prepared you know and other cultures are too. Mean I remember years ago when I was younger I worked at a convenience store and there used to be poltergeist type activity that would happen while I was at work and it got taken over eventually years and years later I was in there and there it's owned now by some gentlemen from Pakistan and I asked them if they had seen anything like that going on in the store and the guy just looked at me kind of quizzically and he's just like, I'm not worried about it, God is great, God will handle it, know and it's just like okay, even for Muslim cultures they feel like they're doing, as long as you're doing your spiritual best, God will take care of you, you don't have to worry about demons or djinn or whatever that is that they think it might be.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:01:00

And I think just seeing djinn there, I think that's what Under the Shadow was one of the finest, finest horror films I've seen in the twenty first century and that actually terrified me in a way that the Christian horror just doesn't. I suppose it's the same sort of thing that you have with British folklore like you do not mess with fairies, they are not cute little beings living at the bottom of the garden granting wishes, you leave them alone and that kind of feels very sort of compatible with a gin that you don't want to be getting their attention. This is the thing as well, if you look at more animist cultures there you're going to have a sense of some spirits will dislike you because you've entered their territory, other spirits will be completely indifferent to you and I think when you recognize that you're just this tiny little individual moving through the world you become a little bit less like anthropocentric I think and I think that that's part of the other issue. There's a weird sense of, what's the word I'm looking for, egotism I think in the sense that you're somehow significant enough to have attracted the attention of this entity.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:02:10

And I'm gonna blame the Warrens for a lot of the belief in that but

AP Strange: 01:02:15

I absolutely blame them, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean there was a big push in the 70s, the Warrens, Malachi Martin, William Peter Blatty was part of it and the Bishop McKenna that broke off and had his own little like splinter cell of Catholicism in Connecticut It was definitely a unified effort to put the fear of not the fear of God and the people but put the fear of the devil and the people to drive them back to church, right? It was a concerted effort people you're being hoodwinked if you believe in demons in most of these cases.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:02:57

Yeah, very much so. I think it's funny as well when you look at films like The Conjuring and how they're very much ascribe this christian reasoning to everything. But then by comparison you look at insidious and yes it has demons in the further but they're almost like, I don't know they're not actually described as being like Christian demons they're more just like evil entities that they've just decided to call demons. To me it became much more interesting that there's all this weird stuff in the Further and it didn't really matter where it came from you just didn't really want to attract its attention and that to me was more I think probably closer to the truth perhaps.

AP Strange: 01:03:41

Yeah, yeah and I like when it's more ambiguous like that and like where you did the ring as well, like Japanese, the Japanese have a lot of different kinds of spirits and entities and it's not as simple as demons and or ghosts, know, they have a whole range to choose from. So yeah, my biggest problem with demons and horror movies is it's just lazy. It's laziness. So there there are so many options and you're gonna pick demons. That's just sad.

AP Strange: 01:04:18

But alright. Well, as far as the whole franchise goes, I realize you said you would watch the first four. I didn't even realize there were any beyond four but

Icy Sedgwick: 01:04:29

There's possibly seven in total unless there's an eighth one I've forgotten about but there's I know it definitely goes up to six.

AP Strange: 01:04:36

Wow yeah well they keep making money with them so they're just gonna keep making them like this. How do you feel that the third one stacks up in the grand scheme of the ones you've seen?

Icy Sedgwick: 01:04:51

I I mean, I'll be honest, I like the second one the best because I think the second one does more interesting things because of the fact that the whole thing is static camera so you don't end up with motion sickness which is nice. But because of the fact that it cycles through cameras in the system so you end up well at one minute you're watching the kitchen then you might be watching another room then you're watching another room and so on. It's the audience that's technically being moved not the camera which is a really interesting way of doing it And I think that the characters are just more likable in the second one and I like the fact that there's the daughter who she's the stepdaughter of the sister involved and she's the only one who kind of goes off and starts doing research and looking into what's happening in the house because you've always got that one character who has to try and explain everything to the audience. Think because she's the one who figures out about this family or this old family curse sort of thing that's affecting the sisters but I think the third one has its moments and it's almost like when it has one of its moments it's very very good but the rest of the time it just kind of feels a bit lackluster by comparison and I think part of that is just that a lot of the best parts are actually gimmicks from other films and it's like oh we're gonna move the camera on an oscillating fan so we're going to physically move the frame so stuff's going to happen off frame.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:06:30

It's like well to be fair Poltergeist did that in 1982 so what else do you have in your box real quick? Oh you've just got that one again and again. Right?

AP Strange: 01:06:37

Right.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:06:38

So I think that for me and the fact that they put the Bloody Mary scene in the trailer don't squander your best sequence in the trailer.

AP Strange: 01:06:45

Right, yeah.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:06:47

So yeah, so it has its moments and it's not the worst film I've ever seen but it was also the kind of film where if they just stopped at the second film nobody would have missed the third one.

AP Strange: 01:06:57

Yeah, I think you're right. I would have to agree with your assessment on that. But before we end, I did want to commend you on Rebel Folklore, your book, because I was telling you before we recorded for the audience, was like, I started following IC like years ago on Twitter and then I've switched platforms several times, finally got away from Twitter and then wasn't following her anymore and somebody brought this book to my attention. And I was like, oh yeah, Icy. So then I went and found her on the other socials that I'm now using.

AP Strange: 01:07:41

But I got the book and is great because it's basically a lot of characters from different traditions, some goddesses, some witches, some trickster figures that you talk about throughout the book and with fantastic illustrations by Melissa Jaram. So I mean this book is like a piece of art.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:08:07

It really is, she did such a good job with the illustrations.

AP Strange: 01:08:11

But but your little write ups are great too. It's it's almost like a little a little encyclopedia of a rebellious folklore entities. So how did this book come about?

Icy Sedgwick: 01:08:25

DK approached me, they actually they said that they had they already had the concept in mind and they approached me and asked if I would write it and the general principle behind it was that the figures, while we're calling them rebels, they're more ambiguous so even the quote unquote evil figures in there and there are a few that you wouldn't want to encounter. In general they're only a problem if you basically encounter them in the wrong way. So characters like La Diabolesse from The Caribbean for example, she only targets sort of men who are out late at night with the implication being they're men who would harass a woman on her own late at night. So it's one of those kind of things that are quite easy to avoid their attention quite a lot of the time. And then you also have other figures who some of them are almost entirely benevolent like the Pleiades, it's quite difficult to find any negative stuff about them and Scheherazade in The 1,001 Nights who's my absolute favorite, they're all really positive figures but the way that they go about things can sometimes be a bit rebellious or they can buck the system in some kind of way which is why Robin Hood's in there because you can't write about rebels in folklore and not mention Robin Hood.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:09:46

I think it was basically it was trying to be respectful of other cultures. So for example when I'd included Raven from the Pacific Northwest, I actually got some help from my Salish friend on that one just to make sure that I was covering Raven in like respectful manner and I made sure where possible that if I could read sources from particular areas, so like when I looked at the one for Bali, I made sure that I was looking at websites written by people from Bali rather than just articles from elsewhere so I wanted to try and make sure that I was really getting the point of these figures from the people who were their culture and then obviously that's why there's massive reading lists in the back so if you're interested in any of them you can then go off and find out more about them. And I think there's some in there where it was like I'd heard of them but didn't really know a lot about them so it was quite interesting going to find out more. And then there were other ones where I thought I knew what they were but then again further investigation was like no no no you got that one wrong.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:10:48

And it was quite interesting I think to see how in some places figures are quite similar and you don't want to say this is the Japanese version of so and such a figure because then that flattens all culture out into one thing and I don't think that's helpful. But I do think spotting the similarities is quite helpful because it then shows the preoccupations humans have had in order to have these figures in their stories. So the psychopomps are an excellent example of that. They appear in culture all over the place and you get them in ancient Greece, get them in other cultures, you get them in sort of like Brittany in the nineteenth century and so on. And I think that again that idea that someone's going to take you at the point that you die and guide you to where you need to go, to me that's quite comforting.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:11:36

So I think that the similarities between the figures are less about oh this is the same spirit with a different name and it's more about this is what people have found important and there's probably quite a lot we can learn from that sort of from like a how to be human perspective.

AP Strange: 01:11:54

Yeah, no, agree. There's something about the human experience regardless of where you are in the world that comes through these figures and when you note those similarities what you're really noting is the universality of the human experience with some of these bigger things, these bigger emotions like life, death, sex, and hunger and growing up like all these different elements are things that we all experience by virtue of being human, you know. But

Icy Sedgwick: 01:12:24

then at the same time where they do have differences it's really useful because then it forces you to look at the context

AP Strange: 01:12:29

so if

Icy Sedgwick: 01:12:30

you look at for example Bordeaux and Contardo in the Amazon there's a lot of to do with his stuff to do with colonialism and things like that so I think you can't divorce them from their context either which is good because then it makes you actually look at the context and acknowledge the circumstances that actually led to these figures becoming so prevalent. So I think it's quite useful because people sometimes come out with this nonsense of all folklore isn't political and everything involving people is political and I think there's nothing wrong with being better informed about the world in which you live because then you can have more empathy for your fellow humans and you can basically hopefully cause less harm and just basically be a bit less of a dick to people for want of a better word. I sort of feel like folklore can be quite helpful because you see the universality you realize, oh we all have the same challenges but then you can be like but then now I can look at for example Anansi only appears in America because of the Transatlantic slave trade. So you're forced to acknowledge that which means you're more likely to potentially make some kind of reparations to repair the harm caused by that.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:13:44

And I don't see that that's a bad thing and I think anything that helps you to have empathy with other people can only really be a good thing.

AP Strange: 01:13:55

I agree and I mean to me the golden rule is don't be a dick.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:14:00

Mean Bill and Ted got it right man, excellent to each other if people just live by that one dictum how amazing would life be?

AP Strange: 01:14:08

Yeah well you know we can hope, we can hope. Well you and I in each our own small ways we'll try to try to put that out into the world and encourage people be excellent to each other.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:14:22

Party on.

AP Strange: 01:14:24

Yeah. All right. So as far as your podcast goes and your blog, fabulous folklore, easy to find for I will include the link in the show description. But what do you have on the horizon for your show and your blog or projects that you're working on?

Icy Sedgwick: 01:14:43

The podcast will probably just continue forever at this point because I'm literally still on season one and it started in January 2019 because I just haven't stopped and I've got loads of requests from people to get through so that'll be fun. In terms of projects though I do actually have the sequel to Rebel Folklore comes out in August and that one's called Ghost Law and it sort of specifically looks at much more supernatural or paranormal entities around the world. So you've got things like where did the idea of the poltergeist come from? We've got, oh I'm trying to remember some of other ones that are in there because I'm getting mixed up with rebel folklore now but we've got

AP Strange: 01:15:26

Are you gonna include Jeff the Mongoose by any chance?

Icy Sedgwick: 01:15:29

Unfortunately not. We've got Green Lady ghosts in there, we've got, oh the Paris Catacombs ghost is in there, is a rare example of a benevolent ghost who helps people who get lost in the catacombs. We've got a marvellous nurse ghost from Mexico who is very much a helpful benevolent spirit as well. So there's some really nice figures in there but then there's obviously the ones where like I don't want to encounter that one thanks. So it's again it's that sort of balance and I think the one thing that was really interesting about these ones, some of them dovetail with urban legends but it was the similarity between some of the stories and again that then demonstrates the trends that you have in the story.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:16:13

So there's one of them for example, Fisher's Ghost from Australia is kind of in that vein of like a ghost that appears and shows where their remains are so that justice can be done And that's like a really nineteenth century preoccupation with the ghost story as a whole so it was really cool to then see it pop up in a ghost legend as well. So there's quite a lot of interest and explorations of just ghosts as a concept through where they appear and how they relate to the stories and how the stories change over time as well. So that one was quite a lot of fun to do as well.

AP Strange: 01:16:48

Cool, when do you anticipate that being available?

Icy Sedgwick: 01:16:54

I should have

AP Strange: 01:16:54

noticed off the top

Icy Sedgwick: 01:16:55

of my head. It's August, it's either the seventh or the ninth and I know that's in The UK, I don't know about the date in America but I would imagine it would be fairly similar.

AP Strange: 01:17:04

It's

Icy Sedgwick: 01:17:05

August though basically this year so not long.

AP Strange: 01:17:08

Right right cool. Well at the very least by Christmas time if people are looking for a paranormal gift for people they can always look up your books.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:17:17

That would be helpful, All

AP Strange: 01:17:21

right, well this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for coming on Icy.

Icy Sedgwick: 01:17:25

This was great pleasure, honestly.

AP Strange: 01:17:27

Yeah. Alright. Well, I'll talk to you soon.