Episode 312: Poltergeist (Myth Movie Night)
/Con artists and harmful horror tropes and production scandals, oh my! We’re talking about the Spielberg classic, Poltergeist, the origins of these spirits, and how we can do better with our horror tropes.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of genocide, racism, violence, kidnapping, child endangerment, body horror, death, mourning, and misogyny.
Housekeeping
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Transcript
[Theme Music]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And this episode 312 talking all about Poltergeist baby.
JULIA: Ah, the movie Poltergeist, what a wonderful and weird movie with a really interesting background and a lot of stuff for us to talk about.
AMANDA: Incredible. It really is a classic of the genre in a way that you sort of forget, like when we talked about the Halloween movies. I was like, oh, yeah, I guess this wasn't always a thing that—that we talked about. Like I guess teenagers didn't know he's die after having sex in horror movies. Like it—it is the thing that comes from somewhere and I love the chance Julia to talk about the origins of those tropes with you.
JULIA: Yeah, and people forget how fucked up some Spielberg movies can be. So this one in particular is pretty fucked up.
AMANDA: But Julia, whenever we do a myth movie night, we always have to sort of flip a coin. We made Eric do it last time and talk about a, a two minute summary of the movie. So are you feeling prepared and spooky and ready to do that today?
JULIA: I always feel prepared and spooky.
AMANDA: Yay.
JULIA: I should be fine.
AMANDA: It was a loaded question.
JULIA: Let me get my timer up real quick. Beautiful. Alright, ready?
AMANDA: I'm ready. Are you ready?
JULIA: Always baby.
AMANDA: Alright, let's do it.
JULIA: So the Freeling family lives in a planned community and they have three kids Dana, Robbie and Carol Anne. Carol Anne starts doing that creepy kid thing where she starts talking to TV static like its person. And then claiming at the end one of the infamous lines of the film, they're here. After that weird shit starts happening around the house. Glasses breaking, furniture moving around and the wife Diane finds it like kind of cool at first, but it quickly becomes super malicious. During a storm, the creepy tree that's outside the kids window seemingly comes to life and tries to eat the kid Robbie. And while everyone's distracted by that, Carol Anne gets sucked into a portal in her closet and disappears. However, they can still hear her voice through the TV. So the Freelings contact a paranormal investigative team who determined that there were several Spirits in the house including a Poltergeist. The husband Steven also learns that the whole community was built over a former cemetery and that the graves were moved before construction began. A medium is called and she determines that there is a malicious spirit that stole Carol Anne and is preventing the other Spirits in the house from moving on. They managed to open the portal that Carol Anne went through and Diane enters it to try to get Carol Anne out and manage to pull her out like and—this covered with ectoplasm, it's super gross. The medium then says the house is clean. But as the family plans to move, the malicious beast spirit returns to try to kidnap Carol Anne back. In an attempt to escape, they fall into the flooded unfinished swimming pool in their backyard which reveals lots of dead bodies showing that only the tombstones were moved not the actual graves themselves. Diane manages to escape with the children and the whole family drives away as their house is sucked into a portal and disappears.
AMANDA: You did it Julia.
JULIA: That's it. That's the movie.
AMANDA: It's a lot. A lot happens there.
JULIA: There's a lot and there's a lot of like creepy scenes that I didn't touch on just because they're like, showing the haunting that's happening, like at one point some guy sees his own face kind of get shredded in the mirror. And then it turns out he's fine. And it's—it's wild, truly wild movie.
AMANDA: What was your impression rewatching? So this is something that I—you know, had an experienced before watching it for today's episode, but I know you are more of a connoisseur of the horror genre. So how does it stand up?
JULIA: It still stands up. I think there are some really interesting effects that happen in the film. It is well produced. There's a lot of me looking at the film and being like, wow, this is bad parenting. While you guys could be doing a better job at this. This is really bad. What are you thinking? What's going on? But it is like a really interesting film in that it did kind of create this specific brand of horror that was very much like a criticism on commercialism and capitalism, which is both surprising and not surprising from Spielberg given the other movies that he put out around this time period. And I just—I think it's really interesting. As a little background for people who aren't familiar with the movie or anything like that, Poltergeist premiered in 1982. It was written by Steven Spielberg, Michael Grais and Mark Victor with the story by Spielberg. And it was directed by Toby Hooper who also directed the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Which is also really interesting and kind of like gets into a little bit of film history because Spielberg was originally supposed to direct it, but he was contractually obligated to not direct any other films while he was in the process of directing E.T. So Toby Hooper was brought in, but there was a whole thing where it's like, Toby Hooper would like set up the shot and then Spielberg would step in and actually do the directing part, or according to some people Spielberg was hands off, but some people said that he was like, super hands on and basically like Toby Hooper's, like, name was there and that was about it. And it's just like a really, he said, she said, type of production scandal that was happening there.
AMANDA: It is really deeply relatable to me of like signing a contract or getting or like doing an NDA. And then being like, well, you know, factually, I did work there. And factually, I left very quickly. You can draw your own conclusions as to what my experience was like. But there we go.
JULIA: Yeah, exactly. So it's a interesting film. Again, the special effects were very interesting for the time period. Spielberg movies always have really interesting special effects because of his relationship with ILM, which is the Industrial Light and Magic special effects company. They did Jurassic Park, they did a bunch of different stuff, but his special effects are always really interesting. And in this particular film, because we're dealing with ghosts, and a Poltergeist which we'll get into a little bit more later in the episode, they have to do a lot of like, really cool camerawork, and really cool like practical special effects. So I think the movie is really interesting in that regard as well. Also, just in case you haven't seen it, starring JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson. A very young Craig T. Nelson to like, he is a handsome man in this film, I'll say that. And it was just like a major critical and commercial success. And it has been recognized as a horror movie classic for years.
AMANDA: Incredible. It really surprises me looking back that it was also nominated for three Academy Awards. It's not a thing that I sort of associated with horror. And I think that our like, our meaning, like, you know, US Hollywood cultural snobbishness about genre film, is something that I grew up thinking is really normal in the 90s and 2000s. And now as more you know, sci-fi and fantasy movies are being nominated. The academy sort of begrudgingly has to recognize genre film, but there is still being like, we talked with this all the time. Like there's so much more interesting stuff being done in genre film than I think in mainstream movies a lot of the time. And I mean, I'm glad they got three Academy Awards. I think horror movies pioneered effects in a way that they could not ignore.
JULIA: Yeah, absolutely. So like you said, nominated for Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Visual Effects Editing and Best Original Score, which I'm not a score person. So that's not my bag, but sound effects and visual effects. Hell yeah. Love that kind of stuff. So, so really was doing some interesting stuff with it, for sure. But before we kind of dig into the tropes of the film, and kind of where it lies in the field of horror movies, let's talk about a Poltergeist. Because we're talking about a movie called Poltergeists. But where do we get the word Poltergeist? What does it mean? So anyone familiar with German will probably recognize that it is a German word deriving from polter, which means noise or racket as in like making a racket, and Geist reading spirit or sometimes ghost. So traditionally, a Poltergeist refers to a specific type of paranormal activity that have no demonstrable cause, but were believed to be the activity of mischievious Spirits. So for example, Poltergeists are often considered the source of things like objects flying through the air and hitting people, furniture, or walls moving and shaking or noises that sound like wWrapping on walls or on furniture, or even imitating human voices. So in various reports of Poltergeists, they have been known to break plates and bowls, they shift furniture, they shatter windows, they bump objects and people. And they also even bite despite the fact that they're often portrayed as either shapeless or without form. And I mean, we see a lot of those in the film. A lot of those examples are definitely available to us in the film. Knocking or cracking are also common sounds associated with Poltergeists as well as doors, slamming, cabinets opening and closing on their own accord and books falling out of bookcases. So a Poltergeist is of course, not exclusively a German thing, despite the fact that we get the word from the German. Many various cultures feature mischievious Spirits like a Poltergeist, so. One that comes to mind is something like a leprechaun with their predilection for practical jokes like misplaced items and inexplicable masses, you know. And in a similar vein, the Iberian and Filipino, Duwende is a similarly mischievous spirit, though they tend to have more of a physical form like a leprechaun, as opposed to the often shapeless Poltergeist. Long story short, Poltergeist mischievous spirit. Usually not visible to the naked eye, kind of just mischievous ghost, for lack of a better phrase.
AMANDA: Yeah, unlike almost any other spirit or creature that we talked about on the show. The Poltergeist is something I associate with its effects, rather than itself and its own shape. A ghost were like, oh, we see something but it doesn't do anything, Right. Like, we often talk about the presence or the ways you can detect it or what you do when you see one. But with a Poltergeist, it's like, oh, no, something moved, I hear something, I see something. And it's almost like defined by its negative, right, like defined by the lack of other explanations or telltale signs. If it's, you know, noisy, you know, disruptive, mysterious, a little bit scary, then maybe it's a Poltergeist.
JULIA: I think that brings up a great point. I think also a lot of times when like paranormal investigators or people who have studied, ghosts and this kind of thing are talking about the difference between ghosts and Poltergeists. A ghost is obviously like, the spirit of a deceased human being. Whereas Poltergeists are more often defined as like a form of energy. So like, if something bad happens in a location, that negative energy, rather than being like an individual spirit, is a force that has been created. You know what I mean?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Bad memories, all kind of coalescing into a force rather than, like, oh, that's the spirit of old man rivers. He died here in 1850. You know what I mean?
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: Poltergeists might be a German word, but to explore the way that Poltergeists is seen and used in modern society, we kind of have to explore the early literary beginnings of the spiritualism movement. And in that sense, the 19th century American con artist history.
AMANDA: Yay, nothing I love more than a good history of a con.
JULIA: I know you do. And it's because a lot of stories that were referred to in newspapers and in writings as Poltergeists, they were eventually proven to be hoaxes.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So to get us started on that path, we need to travel to Rochester, New York and meet the Fox sisters.
AMANDA: Julia, I don't know what it is about Western and Central New York, but something about it just a bread cults and spiritualism and con artists and hucksters and snake oil salesmen, and I—I couldn't be more delighted to live in close proximity to this history.
JULIA: Yes. If you have never heard of the Burned-over district of New York, Google that, check it out. It has a fascinating history. We're gonna talk a little bit about that today.
AMANDA: Yes, thrilling.
JULIA: The Fox sisters were perhaps one of the most publicized origins of the spiritualism movement. Amanda, what do you know about the spiritualism movement?
AMANDA: Well, Julia, it was a craze and a trend across people of means for the most part, who were really interested in going to seances and experts and fortune tellers and people who could connect with the dead. I think in a lot of ways, this comes after the sort of like high Victorian popularity of mourning, popularized by Queen Victoria and her beloved husband, Albert died and people, you know, got very into, like death mementos, and like wearing mourning in a very extravagant ways for a lot longer than they did historically, because the Queen did, and therefore, you know, Brits took it as popular, and Americans both wanted to emulate Brits while also wanting to do their own thing. And so I think in a lot of ways, you know, death was less taboo, it was less scary. I think death was also starting to get medicalized. So you know, death would happen outside the home more frequently, there was more of a death industry, people you know, took care of and washed and shrouded their dead less often as more people move to cities. And so as death becomes less something that you deal with, on a sort of routine basis, you know, in your farm or your village and more thing where like, you could see wild accidents or you know, factory mishaps or, you know, somebody died or there was a plague or suddenly there was a house fire and people die, like, it's a lot less predictable, a lot more mysterious and something that you have to kind of like figure out your relationship to. And in some ways, I see it as being really analogous to like the popularity of true crime podcasts in the you know, the—the 2010s and things like that. Where stuffs happening in the world and we kind of grab on to the ways that we can like tangentially kind of get our minds around it, and talk about it, while not facing the fact that we're all going to die one day. So that's I know spiritualism.
JULIA: And that's a lot. You know a lot about spiritualism. Also, just as a side note, I read a great romance novel that has spiritualism and the death of Prince Albert as like a sub plot of the novel, and it was great.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: I had a really good time with that. So as you said, all those things are true. For our like conversation that we're gonna have here about the Fox sisters and stuff. It's also important to know that this was like a social and religious movement as well, which believed in the, quote, continuity of consciousness after the transition of death, and that communication between the living and the dead could be achieved. It—it was also the belief of spiritualism, that in the afterlife, the dead continued to evolve past their abilities as mortal humans, making them more advanced than mortal humans. And as they were more evolved than those on the mortal plane, contacting the dead meant that they could provide insight into moral and ethical issues, and sometimes act as quote unquote “spirit guides”.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So that was why people wanted to contact the dead. Not just for like the closure, but the idea that the dead know more than us and therefore can give us insight on how to deal with ethical conundrums of the modern day.
AMANDA: Yeah, people were getting less religious, they had more options depending on of course your race and class and gender. You maybe had choices that you didn't before. And it is overwhelming when you have more options than the no options that you were used to.
JULIA: Yeah, I'm glad you brought up gender as a thing as well, because it's worth noting that many prominent spiritualists, even after the Fox sisters were women, and were prominent leaders, not only in the spiritualist community, but as well in the abolitionist and suffrage movements in the United States as well.
AMANDA: Yeah, and this was also a—from my understanding, mostly from romance novels, to be honest, umm you know, a sort of a social activity, you could do, like a thing you could go out, you know, women weren't like hanging out in—in coffee shops, or, you know, political and philosophical leagues for the most part because they weren't allowed to. And so if you did something that was seen as feminine or domestic, or the sort of natural outgrowth to like having tea in someone's drying room, or you know, doing like embroidery or volunteering, or the, you know, small amount of things that privileged women have means we're allowed to do, this was kind of close enough to religion that it was sort of like a weird social quirk. But in reality, it was a way to like have a bit of a thrill, like a lot of it was super theatrical with like, hidden trip wires, and mirrors and lights and assistance. And in almost like a theater or a show that you could go to, you know, unchaperoned or maybe your chaperone was also super into.
JULIA: That is a great point. I'm so glad you're talking about like the kind of like magic behind the curtain of this. Because it really did all start with the Fox sisters. So the spiritualist movement marks the start of the movement as March 31st,1848.
AMANDA: A specific date.
JULIA: Which coincided with the Fox sisters reportedly making contact with their first spirit. So there were three Fox sisters, there was Leah, Kate, and Maggie. So Maggie and Kate were the ones who claimed to have contacted the spirit of a murdered peddler, who they said haunted their home, and who communicated with them through the Wrapping noises that the older sister Leah heard as well. So their story very quickly spread and then became a sensation. And they became really just the first celebrity mediums, which is kind of wild seeing how a celebrity medium is like a real job nowadays, you know what I mean?
AMANDA: Yeah, and for all kinds of reasons involving technology and taxes and distribution and mail, the sort of journalistic industry was a lot broader too. And so you could hear about crazes that were sweeping Philadelphia if you lived in Boston or whatever, in a way that you really couldn't before.
JULIA: Yeah, it's absolutely true. I love the idea of like how quickly their popularity spread. And their popularity also stemmed from the fact that they would perform public seances. So you could like go to a theater and buy a ticket and see them. So on November 14th, 1849, they performed the quote unquote, “Wrapping” at Corinthian Hall, which was a venue in Rochester, New York, which was also notably the first demonstration of spiritualism before a paying public. Like you said, a lot of the times this was like stuff that was done in rich people's parlors as like a party thing you could like, oh, we're going to have drinks at our house, and then also there's going to be a seance. But this was performed in front of like a large crowd. So this is just despite their popularity in 1888, the middle sister Maggie confessed that the quote unquote “Wrappings" were a hoax. She said that the sisters had been kicking tables and cracking their toes beneath their skirts in order to make the noises that they attributed to Spirits. Maggie later tried to recant her confession, but by then their reputations had been absolutely ruined. And while the Fox sisters were outed as frauds, that did not stop the wave of spiritualism that they helped start. And as you pointed out, as well, Amanda, like many influential members of society, were won over by spiritualism. Arthur Conan Doyle, for example. The writer of the Sherlock Holmes books was included in this kind of wave of spiritualism that was sweeping both the United States and also like England. So Doyle declared himself publicly as a spiritualist in 1916. So again, the first performance of like, the Wrapping by the Fox sisters was in 1849. And it was still going strong in 1916.
AMANDA: Yeah, imagine if a trend from the mid 1950s was like stronger than it had ever been. I mean, in some ways, I guess that's like, rock and roll, but it's almost not even a trend, like nobody stands up and it's like, I am bravely stating I'm a fan of rock and roll. Like It just it's— it's amazing the—the enduring quality of spiritualism.
JULIA: Yeah. And I think part of that too might just be because modern society, we go through trends faster because we have partially like just a—like shorter attention span as a society, but also you know, you can spread ideas much quicker than we were even in 1849 where you could hear about stuff in Philadelphia from Boston, but you know.
AMANDA: Yeah, it's also worth saying just of great interest to me, and just the—the references that I appreciate, that WB Yeats's lifetime was almost exactly the same as the spiritualist movement. He was born in 1865, and died in 1939. And he took a hard left turn into spiritualism late in his life. Where he was at first, like, let me talk about the Irish character and then later was like, there's fairies everywhere, and I really need to talk about it.
JULIA: And he was right. As far as I'm concerned, he was right. So Doyle in particular is an interesting example of this because he was drawn into their beliefs because he suffered a lot of losses, very quickly in a row, he lost his son, he lost his brother, he lost two brother in law's and nephews in the years of the first World War. And for Doyle, and many people from this period of time, the existence of Spirits from beyond the grave is what drew them there. The idea that, one you could contact the people you lost and also we could gain knowledge from them. So that's really like what was the draw for spiritualism? But spiritualists were not the only ones who were evoking Spirits and Poltergeists and garnering attention in the real world. Similar to our movie Poltergeist, there was the story of the Enfield Poltergeist, which was the actual quote unquote “haunting featured in the Conjuring 2〞which I watched recently for the first time back in October. Pretty good movie, not bad.
AMANDA: Good.
JULIA: Very fictionalized for what actually happened in the you know, real life story, but again, a very, very interesting one.
AMANDA: That's the whole beat of the Conjuring isn't it? Is a highly fictionalized version of things that in theory are true.
JULIA: That's true. So between 1977 and 1979, the Hodgson family reported Poltergeist activity in their council house in Enfield London in the UK. So the activities centered mainly on the two young daughters of the family, Margaret, who was 13 and Janet who was 11. So the story was regularly covered in the newspaper the Daily Mirror for like a full two years, reporting the activity and the investigation by paranormal researchers and investigators, which included of course, the infamous Warren's because they made a movie about it. So over the course of 18 months, and many investigations and interviews, the sisters were eventually caught in their lie on film. So Janet was seen on video bending spoons and attempting to bend an iron bar herself and then blaming the Poltergeist. And one of the most famous photographs that came out of the Enfield Poltergeist situation which is of the girls like levitating, was denounced by skeptics as being like common gymnastics caught on camera. So basically, they were jumping on the bed and then making it seem like they were floating, you know, horizontally.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And then just grabbed a picture of it. And they're like, look, it looks like we're floating, you know what I mean? So it's really interesting to talk about the Enfield Poltergeist combined with the story of the Fox sisters, and then compared to our film Poltergeist, because all of these featuring young women, many of these instances of quote unquote, 〝real Poltergeists" tend to end with the revelation that it all started as like young women playing school age pranks that then just got out of hand, right? So to combine this with Carol Ann, whose family in the film assumes that she's just playing and hiding before she is taken. And Diane, who's the mother, who is like the second to notice and then channel the Spirits in the house, lays a really interesting dynamic that intrinsically ties women and Poltergeist together. I'm not sure exactly if this is like something from the gender dynamics of the spiritualism movement if it has something to do with as we've talked about before, in a lot of horror movies like oh, women are just more sensitive and therefore more prone to be manipulated by Spirits. I just think it's really interesting that we do kind of tie this women as spiritualists, but also con artists to the film of Poltergeists, where the women do really take the center role of the film.
AMANDA: I think part of this has to do with like the disruption of the domestic.
JULIA: Interesting.
AMANDA: The popular imagination or—or memory of Poltergeists is mostly to do with like, throwing chaos into order. Creating disorder out of order, whether it's you know, knocking glasses off a shelf, or you know, up turning things on a table or knocking over chairs, like they are mundane, but they're also really domestic and stereotypically that is the realm of women. Umm is to, like, keep the house orderly. And I think particularly during the time we're talking about in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, you know, there was a lot of fear around like what would happen if this oppressed and like unpaid workforce of, you know, domestic labor were to fight back. I think that's something about like, reading about, you know, hysteria and about spiritualism and all of these instances back to you know, witch trials and the like, is all about, you know, the—the real male and societal fear of like women acting out. And the things we counted on like order and the clean home, and a meal ready when we get home and this sort of like typical, you know, post-war American imagination, that would be seriously disrupted if women were to withhold labor, much less act out. And so maybe that is part of what ties it together is, you know, exactly like a Poltergeist is causing disruption to the home. And that is kind of like a fantasy. I imagine for so many people used to like the humdrum reality of every day I do work that no one pays me for, and if I don't do it doesn't get done. And you know, fuck this, fuck that, fuck you. Like, let me you know who—who didn't fantasize about like knocking a bowl off a table or—or upturning the beautiful bread, and like smashing on the floor. Does that make any sense?
JULIA: Yes, absolutely it does.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Hold on to like the nugget of that.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: As we go into the second half of our episode, but now we'll get a little bit more into the way that the film Poltergeist uses interesting horror tropes and horrific real-world examples to greet their horror. But first, before we do that, let's grab a refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
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You can listen now at theotherpath.ca or wherever you get your podcasts in your podcast app right now. Check out the Other Path or go to theotherpath.ca, not com, .ca. To learn more about the show and stream it now. And finally, we are sponsored by NYU press, which is the publisher arm of my alma mater. And they reached out because they have a new book out that could not be more relevant to Spirits listeners. Ready for this? Okay, mid-century cocktails, history, lore, and recipes from America's Atomic Age is the newest book in a trilogy called the Cocktails trilogy by Cecilia Teaching. This is a celebrated series, other titles you might have heard of were, Gilded Age Cocktails, and Jazz Age cocktails. And then this is Mid Century Cocktails. Each book shares the best cocktail creations of the 20th century using period recipes as a way to understand the lives of people in the past. Honestly couldn't be more interesting, couldn't be more relevant to me and to Spirits. I am so stoked to check out this book. I send us a copy and it is so beautiful and already I'm thinking like who else can I buy this for in my life. Because a lot of people I know would really love to learn about the past via cocktails that sounds amazing. You can get 30% off and free shipping when you input the code Spirits-FM on nyupress.org. Again, the book is Mid Century Cocktails and the trilogy also includes Gilded Age Cocktails and Jazzy Cocktails and go to nyupress.org or the code Spirits-FM will get your 30% off and free shipping. That code is also in the description. Alright folks and now back to the show.
JULIA: So for this episode, I wanted a kind of ghostly cocktail and decided on one that I found called the Green Ghost. It is incredibly simple, especially if you just like have some green Chartreuse at home. It is just some gin, that green Chartreuse, and a squeeze of lime. And for people who haven't had green Chartreuse, it is a great liquor. It is herbal, it is complex. It is delicious. Definitely worth having as part of your bar staple. I would highly recommend it. One of my favorite cocktails, the last word is also made with green Chartreuse, and it is delicious.
AMANDA: It is really good and just feels like Victorian in a way that I love.
JULIA: It does really. Feel like I should be sipping these right before we start the seance.
AMANDA: Exactly right. I've worn my laziest black gown. Let's do it.
JULIA: The veil over my face, you know, just a—that someone embroidered for me because it's you know, Victorian times.
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: Let's get back to Poltergeist, shall we? One of the film's key reveals, is that this like a planned community distracts the homes that the Frieling family lives on. Also, I didn't mention it in the description of the film—my two minutes but, Craig T. Nelson's character is one of the realtors for this like-planned community. So he kind of gets this insight on, like how the community was built during a scene with his boss, who was just like, yeah, you know, this old graveyard and in order to make way for more houses, we're gonna—we're gonna move stuff, you know what I mean? So that is like one of the key reveals of the film. Which is the Frieling family home lives on what was once a graveyard. And that while the real estate agent company that Steven works for, assures him that the graves were moved before construction, they find out that they only moved to the gravestones and left the bodies behind, which is what has led to their haunting and their misfortune, right?
AMANDA: Yeah, there's a real kind of like, anti-capitalist, I think undertone, you can read into that, which is, you know, how much progress in greed, like the— at some point that runs up against what you really just shouldn't do. And in some ways, the world is just acting back in a way that's totally justifiable.
JULIA: I feel like this movie and Gremlins should be kind of like Spielberg's anti-capitalist back-to-back, here.
AMANDA: Until then he realizes, oh, no, a lot of money is really good. And let me just keep doing that.
JULIA: Yeah. And then he makes stuff like, Ready Player One, and we're like, oh, bud.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JULIA: That didn't land the way you thought it did.
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: Not as bad as gremlins. So in the film, the real estate agent that he's talking to specifically states that the graves were not Native American Graves, which without context might be a little bit confusing. Like if you're watching it now you're like, why would he even need to mention that, you know, but horror movies, especially ghost stories. And especially during this time period, have tethered the image of the desecrated indigenous peoples burial ground, whose sacred resting place is disturbed, leading to justice by way of haunting. They've tethered those two things together. And to this trope or this stereotype is an origin for paranormal activity in films and books that predate Poltergeists. And has been used both before and after the film. So, one of the first ones that I could find was the 1977 Amityville Horror by Jan Anson, which was then turned into a film. Like I think only a few years after that, which included that indigenous burial ground trope as well as Stephen King's Pet Cemetery in 1983. Another example is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining from 1980, which is also based on Stephen King's novel. Professor Jessa Mackinthon wrote a rather extensive, like an exploration of this in an essay entitled, Haunted Real Estate. The occlusion of colonial disposition and signatures of cultural survival in US horror fiction.
AMANDA: Fascinating.
JULIA: Yeah, so here's a great quote from her regarding The Shining and its place kind of within this trope. So, quote, while guiding the Torrance family through the premises. The hotel manager mentions that the hotel has been erected on the site of a former Indian graveyard and against the Native Americans Valley in resistance. But again, the remark is so fleeting that we quickly forget the context of colonial conflict. Instead, the plot centers on the latest aggression stored within the typical American family. And aggression that the bad place brings to the surface. In Freudian terms then, we can read The Shining's main plot of patriarchal violence as a screen memory of the underlying conflict of colonial disposition. And the desecration of Indian graves which can neither be narrated nor forgotten. So if you have the ability to read this article, I'm pretty sure it's on the J store. It is a fantastic essay like genuinely has so many wonderful insights. And for some historical context for American history, for those of us who are unfamiliar, the United States obviously has a horrific history when it comes to the treatment of indigenous peoples. President Andrew Jackson's presidency in particular, saw the brutal removal of Eastern tribal nations to territory west of the Mississippi in the Trail of Tears starting in 1830. And even in a speech, and I read this speech, it's incredibly fucked up. So he did a speech in front of Congress advocating the removal of indigenous people from their tribal lands and attempting to defend that decision. And in doing so, invoked the indigenous grave while perpetuating the image of the quote-unquote 〝savage native" like it is extremely fucked up. I got very mad. It was bad.
AMANDA: It takes effort to hit on that many objectionable tropes while like making the reality that you're pushing, oh God.
JULIA: It's extremely fucked up. And again, the Trail of Tears is one of the like, darkest periods of American history. And one that we do at least teach, but at the same time, like not B as much as we should. So again, remember that nugget that you're talking about, about the gender dynamics of Poltergeists and horror tropes in general, as we kind of shift into this. But there is a shift that takes place in American media around the time that movies like Poltergeists were coming out. So Professor Mackinnon has some insight into where this cultural shift might have come from. Again, here's a quote from her essay, which is, quote, remember that this is not long after the quote-unquote 〝crying Indian anti-littering ad," which aired in 1970. And a note that the quote-unquote 〝crying Indian" himself was an Italian man, not an actual indigenous person. Hate it. Which was a heartbreaker of the change in the way the post-Colombian American immigrants saw American Indians. The trend slowly started to move from the conception of the quote-unquote 〝savage Indian" to something more like a survivor. It's no coincidence that just as quote-unquote 〝Indian burial ground as a trope〝 emerged in the 1970s. So did many activist organizations. The American Indian advocacy group began in 1968, the trail of broken treaties, a massive coast-to-coast protests took place in 1972. In looking at the way that this trope of the indigenous Spirit coming back for revenge in horror exists in the genre, Native American scholar Terry Jean has written her theories as to why the trope gained such popularity. And I think that they all have merit, but particularly the last one. So she has five theories as to why this is the case. So the first is simply that, because it was so successful in early appearances, it kept being used, like, if it works, it works it kind of in the genre. The second is because it is easier to stumble into an unmarked burial ground than it is a cemetery. And that makes it a more convenient trope to be used by the horror genre as a whole. It also grew out of deep racism towards indigenous people and the idea that they are intruding back on the land that was taken from them.
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: And also people fear the unknown, and American settlers grew superstitious of indigenous cultures. Just in history as a general rule. And finally, and like I said, I think most impactfully, that it is a manifestation of fear that indigenous groups will seek retribution.
AMANDA: Yeah, and this is kind of where you and I were hitting on that earlier, but in a different way.
JULIA: So I—I think it's safe to say that American people have not seen repercussions for the atrocities that were done to Native Americans. The land that was taken, the culture that was erased, and the lives that were taken and destroyed. And all this to say, I think the quote-unquote, 〝Indian burial ground trope" in horror is rooted in the atrocities done by white people in this country and is often written and invoked without native involvement. Which is why I think it is a trope that I really hope we stop using in the future.
AMANDA: Yeah, I think that it's a lot easier for settlers to confront the realities of colonialism, displacement, and the murder of indigenous people, as a sort of historical thing in the past. And thinking about and empathizing with native lives only in the past as like, people whose lives are over and who—they're only in your life because you disturb them now, not because of what happened already. And certainly not confronting the realities of native people who are, you know, living and need things now. And realizing huh, like, I wonder how my specific legacy of being descended from settlers, or, you know, benefiting from the privileges of settlers in the US. What is my responsibility? Those are all things that is easy for, you know, a person not to think about, and if you do, it's almost a one thing where you can say like, oh, well, you know, I guess the one step too far is disturbing a grave. Like that—that I think is kind of the unspoken logic of why this is the step too far for settlers in movies like this. And yeah, it's just, gosh, I appreciate you know, digging into this trope, because it's not like a thing that's done and that we have to accept, right? It's like it's a you know, a legacy and—and a continuing injustice that is everyone's responsibility to fix. And not just the thing that we can read about and say, yeah, too bad, [44:21] happening anymore. It's happening every day.
JULIA: Absolutely. And for a little bit more on this topic, I would recommend Native writers [44:28] article for film school rejects, titled Digging Up The Indian Burial Ground trope. It was a fantastic read, and really did like give me a lot of insight into this topic as a whole.
AMANDA: Yeah, I also really love following accounts and journalists like Indian country today. The all my relations podcast, the Native American Journalists Association. All of these have a ton of—just like talking about the realities and complexities of native life today, and real ways that settlers can start to do things like you know, give back land, donate money, and advance native causes.
JULIA: Yeah, it is our legacy as white people and we have a responsibility to do something about that.
AMANDA: 100%.
JULIA: So, before we close out this episode, I wanted to point out a little easter egg that the movie Poltergeist has, that some people who watched it might not have picked up on. Just on a slightly lighter note. So in one scene where Diane and Steven are smoking weed in their bedroom, as their kids have gone to bed, parenting, mwa, A+. Not to say that you can't smoke weed when you have kids, but like this was also the 80s so it was like kind of a statement to have them doing that. So Diane is lying in bed reading a copy of Man and His Symbols, which was the last work by Carl Jung before his death.
AMANDA: Oh boy.
JULIA: Jung actually had his own connection to Poltergeists, something that he wrote about. So in 1909, he met Sigmund Freud in Vienna, and wrote about the account and it does feature a Poltergeist.
AMANDA: Huge if true, Julia, tell me more.
JULIA: So the quote is, while Freud was going on in this way, which is a fucking hilarious way to be like, and Freud would just kept fucking talking.
AMANDA: He talked and talked.
JULIA: While Freud was going on in his way, I had a curious sensation. It was if my diaphragm were made of iron and was becoming red hot, a glowing vault. And at that moment, there was such a loud report from the bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing that the thing was going to topple over on us. I said to Freud, there is an example of a so called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon, a.k.a, a Poltergeist.
AMANDA: Oh my God hanging out with psychologists. I can't.
JULIA: Oh, come, he exclaimed. That is sheer bosch.
AMANDA: Oh, my God.
JULIA: It is not I replied. You are mistaken air professor. And to prove my point, I now predict that there will be another loud report. Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words then the same detonation went off in the bookcase. To this day, I do not know what gave me this certainty.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: So that is all I have for Poltergeists and the movie Poltergeist. I hope that one, it was an interesting insight on the history of Poltergeist and the way that kind of American con artist said the spiritualism movement kind of impacted horror as a genre. And again touched on the tropes that are pretty harmful in the horror genre as a whole. So I hope everyone enjoyed it.
AMANDA: I hope you do too. And no matter what happens around you, whether you see a glass fall off a shelf or decide to withhold your domestic labor as a strike against being unpaid. Remember.
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
AMANDA: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
JULIA: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances, and merch on our website. As well as a form to send us in your urban legends and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.
AMANDA: Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more. Like recipe cards with alcoholic and nonalcoholic for every single episode, directors' commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.
JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective, and production studio. If you like Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.
AMANDA: Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.
JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye!