Listener Mail: Animals Strike Curious Poses

your Mind dot com. Let's see, Rob Do you want to kick us off with this message from Jenna about objects hidden in walls? Yeah, this is a response to an episode I did in October while you were on

parental leave. It was an interview with Brian Hoggard about his book Magical House Protection The Archaeology of counter Witchcraft, which is a fascinating topic about a lot of it coming down to the the hiding of very as objects like under the floorboards of an old house or in the walls, oftentimes with some sort of a superstitious, supernatural intent of of of confounding, capturing, or hurting the devil, or some sort of dark entities that might potentially get

into your home and so uh we finally heard from somebody who had some some personal history with this sort of thing, generates in and says hello from Canada. I have loved show dearly for many years. You're both such exceptional curators of intrigue and knowledge. I am writing to share a story relating to a show you had on late last year with Brian Hoggard regarding items hidden in walls. I'm sorry I am late on writing in on it, but I think you will get a kick out of it.

I live in a small coastal town in the Great Lakes, in an ancient family home that is at least one and eighty years old and predate European settlements of the area. I think it is the oldest structure in our county. But the interesting house in question is a block over from me, the house of my great grandparents. The past two sets of folks who have owned it have discovered quite a collection of objects in the walls during renovations.

A woman who conducts ghost walks in our local town brought the items to my attention, but I didn't think much of it at first, but she came in one day with even more objects, and I began to realize

it was quite a curious situation. Indeed, within the walls of the house were thirteen pairs or singles of children's shoes, many bottles, some with materials inside, broken plate pieces, a shark skin strap for blade sharpening, a worn down bootbrush, an old meat fork, a rusty knife, an old spoon, an old watch case with with a quote order of Isabella the Catholic cigarettes silk within it, a children's primer with many great uncle's names in it, a handsown night

shirt that was rolled up tight and nailed over, a door to coral fossils, and a fragment of a muscle shell from the local beach. An empty box of ted Low's pussy willow powder, a paper heart with one large, single exclamation mark on it, a pair of worn out suspenders, a children's size beer mug, and some other broken and rusty articles. Wow, that's a hall, quite a treasure trove. Yeah, she continues, I'm sorry, I just had a vision of a new genre of YouTube videos. It's wall unboxing videos.

I mean it sounds like it. I mean it is good to going back to the discussion with with Brian. I mean it is good to document these things anyway, she continues. Both my great uncle's name and the reader and the datable objects prove with certainties someone from my family places the objects there. I also know my grandparents built the home. Which one of them it was that created the protective midden I do not know. My great grandmother was a tiny woman of Scottish heritage, full of

them and spirit, who also read tea leaves. My grandfather was a mate tugboat captain and fisherman. His father had Matee ancestry, and his mother was English. I sometimes wonder if the idea came from his mother's side of things, both because she had English heritage, where it is common, but also because of her family's story. She was raised in the tiny old house I live in now because

of a very tragic circumstance. Her parents came over from England in the eighteen fifties with five kids in tow and one on the way who was born in Toronto. After their arrival, the family made their way north to the newly settled town of Southampton, Ontario. Shortly after their arrival, they had my great great grandmother. A large stone tower lighthouse was being built just offshore on the nearby island, and her father fell from the scaffolding and died during construction.

My great great great grandmother was left widowed in a remote new town with seven children. One of the local maytee let her live in what is now my home on his lot. She raised all seven kids here and survived by taking the rich folks in rich folks laundry.

Where the town was built at the river mouth by the shore was also a historic burial ground for the local Anishinabak people's I'm sure some superstition and concern about spirits impact on the family became a real worry for her, and she may have passed the idea down to her youngest daughter, who passed it on to my great grandfather.

My great grandparents also cared for my great grandfather's uncle, another local captain in his older years, who also could have taken part, who was one of the kids born in England. He unfortunately suffered from dementia and wandered off one night and drowned in the lake. I sometimes wonder if the onset of dementia could have influenced his engagement

in such an activity. However, the practice came to be I was reflecting upon its quaintness one evening, and then looked around my tiny cottage to see how alive and well protective magic still is in our family without me realizing it. An old horseshoe has hung above the threshold since my mother was a small girl. I had a dream catcher my mother and and I made, hanging on

one wall, pearly everlasting. Hanging elsewhere from the ceilings, a spiritually protective local native plant, a Dartmoor pixies likeness embossed into a brass plate was hanging on another wall. Cedar hung above every window. I guess culture is more ingrained than we realized. How Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my eccentric little story of life here in rural Canada. Kind regards, Jenna. Wow,

what a great message, Jenna. Indeed, I really appreciate it, all the history here and bringing it back around not only how our ancestors thought about these things, but how we still can think about protecting our homes and supernatural unseen threats and much the same way. So hearing about this was a real treat. Thanks a lot. Yeah, and for any of you wondering out there, I did I did ask her, and yes, did send information about this to Brian Hawkard because it's one of the things that

we we talked about in that interview. He's like, if you find anything like this in your home, right in and let him know about it, because part of his work is an archaeologist, is keeping track of all of this and seeing what's out there. Um. One of the problems with the study of these artifacts is that a lot of things went unreported for so long, and there are a lot of things that may still be out there.

They're only uncovered in homes that are of course sufficiently old, and then if there's some sort of a restoration and effort going on there, Yeah, gonna unbox that wall. Yeah, let's see rob Do you mind if I do this message about our episodes on t from John. Oh, Yes, let's have some tea. John says, Hello, Robert, Joe and j J. I was so excited to see tea as the topic in my feed. I've always hated the way coffee makes me feel, but I find that a cup of tea is just the right thing when I need

a nice, hot, pick me up. Joe, if coffee is such a dangerous game for you you should give tea a try. A few years ago, my partner's parents gave me a six month subscription to a tea service that mailed me several different types of tea every month. Pretty fun. One time the package included something called yawpon. I hope I'm saying that right? Why a U p O N? Rob,

do you know how to pronounce that? Yeah, yawpon. I've never heard of it, but it's apparently the only source of caffeine that grows naturally in North America, and it's generally considered a weed. I can imagine that someday it will be the cool in thing and every hipster coffee shop will offer it. It was pretty tasty, but definitely not the same as tea. As always, Thanks for the hours of informative entertainment. Uh. And then John puts a little uh note in, says high Renata and says ps.

I wrote in several years back after my mom had a stroke, and in so doing I weirdly discovered that my childhood friend Renata also listens to the podcast. Mom's doing great out of assisted living, driving again, generally living her best life. Just felt like I should give you an update on that, since of the time of my last communication, things were pretty dicey. Oh well, that's wonderful news, John, and I'm happy to hear here about your mom. Absolutely

all right. We continue to hear from folks about our Horror of Walkaway episodes, so let's say this one comes to us from Eric. Eric writes, Greetings, gentlemen, I just finished listening to the fourth part of your Horror of Aakaway series, and Rob spoke about being able to at least kind of relate to the feeling described by cassadastrophobia, and I wanted to write in and say that I

do too. I'm with you in an appending kind of to the sentiment, because what I experience has never been significant or extreme enough that I would call it a folk you. But I've always felt mildly uncomfortable under wide cloudless skies. I felt this as long as I can remember, but I grew up in New England, and so I was rarely confronted with them and never gave it too

much thought. Now, however, I live in the American Southwest, in the Sonoran Desert, and during much of the year, days or even weeks can pass where I see not a single cloud. I've lived here more than a decade, and the unrelenting vault of blue, as I have taken to referring to the sky under such circumstances, still never fails to unnerve me, at least slightly. It is heartening to me to know that at least I am not

alone in that. To talk about cassadastrophobia also put me in mind of something that came up when I wrote him once before a couple of years ago. It was on the topic of religions almost always putting paradise above and perdition below, and why that might be, which came up briefly in your Sinkholes episode. I totally forgot about that. Um you cants. You read my email where I gave my own pet theory on an epic sort of listener mail, and one of you, I'm afraid I no longer remember

which of you. It was, wondered about how a religion might work that did the opposite with a heaven below and a hell up above. Being a lifelong player of Dungeons and Dragons and similar games, and also a bit of a homebrewer, that sent me off on something of a tangent I'm meant to write back and share the results with you, but I got caught up in life and forgot. Having been reminded of it by this episode, however, I thought I would take the second opportunity and share

it with you now. I hope you find it amusing. I imagined a culture of dwarves whose religion centered around hard work and community contribution. They are taught that their souls are by nature buoyant and light, and float away from the body upon death, but that in the sky there are terrible monsters from beyond the world who lurk, unable to descend to the surface, but waiting to devour any spirit who drifts into their reach. Hard work, however, adds substance and weight to the soul, even as it

adds muscle and send you to the body. And so each dwarf must labor all through their lives, working together for the benefit of their community and life, so that in death their souls might not float away to be consumed, but instead descend to the deep vaults of the earth, where they can join their honored ancestors who work wonders in the mighty forges. Thank you, gentlemen, again for the work you do and the fascinating insights you always have

to share. Keep it up, stay safe, and stay curious. Eric. Oh what a gorgeous mythology. I love that, Eric, Yeah, yeah, I I Next time I'm using a dwarf character or doing some d MNG that involves dwarves, I may have to borrow this a bit of homebrewing there, all right. This next message is from Wayne, and this email raises an issue that I didn't get into in the Horror Vakawie episodes because of reasons I'll explain in a minute. Wayne says, Hello, Robert and Joe. Thanks for a fascinating

series on horror. Kui. I had one comment on your explanation of the vacuum of space. According to quantum mechanics, which I don't pretend to understand, there can never really be a complete vacuum because of the uncertainty principle. That is, if you measure whether a particle is in a particular volume, you will always get a probability rather than a definite yes or no, and this will always have a non

zero value. An equivalent way to explain this is that there is an energy pervading all space called vacuum energy or zero point energy, which is the minimum level that quantum mechanics will allow. This energy can manifest itself in transient virtual particles that always pop in and out of existence. There's a lot of evidence for this, such as the Casimir force between two parallel plates. Fortunately no medicalorians are

involved now way, and I appreciate you raising this. I actually ended up not getting into it in that series I had wanted to, and then I guess we just

got past it. But one of the reasons I I skipped over it at one point was that I've read different interpretations of the vacuum energy virtual particle phenomenon, and essentially I am not sure whether this the virtual particle phenomenon is best understood as a literal event where particle pairs actually do fluctuate into existence out of the vacuum, or whether thinking about it that way, it is kind of a misinterpretation based on the models we used to

understand the quantum mechanical properties of space. So that's one where I think I personally don't understand the issue well enough. Yet I think I ended up concluding I would need to do at least a whole episodes worth of background research to figure that out. So I left to acide for the time. But maybe that's when we can come back on in the future, perhaps with a physicist guest.

But of course I have read it characterized that way the the idea of the virtual particles fluctuating into and out of existence or into existence and annihilating one another usually, So thank you for raising it. Uh, let's see, rob did you want to do one of these weird house cinema messages? All right, Yeah, let's see what we have here. All right, this one comes to us from Dan. Dan says, hello,

Robin Joe. I'm listening to your weird House cinema episode on Beauty and the Beast with regards to Fairytale Theater. This was a show that I used to watch on PBS when I was a child. I do remember one episode that will be of interest to you, The Boy who left home to find out about the Shivers. It is a grim Brother's adaptation starring Peter McNichol, Christopher Lee, David Warner, Frank Zappa as a mute hunchback like assistant,

and Vincent Price as the narrator. Dan, Well, that got my attention, so I dug up some pictures from this episode. Obviously I haven't seen it, but yes, yes, here is Frank Zappa as a as an Egore type figure, and one of the pictures I found he appears to be disgustingly eating something that's kind of falling out of his mouth and crumbles. But I see David Warner here with

long hair. He is staring down at Peter McNichol. And this is when I guess Peter McNichol was I don't know, maybe cast more as like the young hero type before he was like Yan Ocean Ghostbusters too. He wasn't he in like a Dragon Slaying movie? Oh goodness, I don't remember. I mean, I guess he's mostly known like the biggest things he's been in outside of Ghostbusters too, of course, well what Alec McBeal, And he was in Sophie's Choice, But I don't know about dragon stuff. I mean he's

been a lot of stuff. He's sent a fair amount of of voice acting over the years as well. I looked it up the Dragon Slayer nineteen one film. I've never seen it, but I it apparently stars Peter McNichol as I think he's like the young hero who has to fight a dragon. Alright, well, yeah, I mean that's that's the film. That's uh, that has a fair cult following, do I think in large part to the dragon effects in it all the way back to maybe we have

to check that one out someday. I'm weird House. Yeah, it's got some fun cast connections in it, for sure. I as for these, uh these stills though from from this episode of Fairytale Theater. Yeah, this looks amazing. What what a strange cast. It also looks very pleasingly low budget like these are. This is not you know, deep immersion sets that this looks like community theater. They've got Frank Zappa wearing an it's kind of like a bathrobe. Okay.

This next message is from Lawrence. Lawrence says, Hi, Rob and Joe, I really enjoyed your recent Weird House episode on Beauty and the Beast. This was the hourrage hurts one from the check film. Uh. Laurence says, I got a chuckle picturing George C. Scott as the Beast and found your descriptions of the seventy eight movie really lovely. This got me thinking of all the ways surrealist writer

Angela Carter retold Beauty and the Beast. Her collection, The Bloody Chamber features several direct retellings, as well as a few inspired by tales. The book also has a Company of Wolves. Carter did the script for the movie adaptation, which is both a riff on Beauty and the Beast as well as Little Red Riding Hood. Would you consider doing Company of Wolves on Weird House? I'd give anything to hear you guys described the scene where a wolf

comes out of a man's mouth. Lawrence. Oh, I haven't seen this movie in years, but I remember loving it, and yes, it it was mighty strange. Indeed, though I've forgotten a lot of the detail about what happens in it. Yeah. Like likewise, the only thing I really remember is the transformation. I might have seen just parts of it when I was younger. I don't know if I ever actually said and watched the whole thing. But yeah, it's a Neil

Jordan's picture. It's got a great cast. David Warner's in there, Angela Landsberry, Yeah, Brian Glover, that was some fun stuff in there. Terence Stamp. I think it's one of those movies that's like, who is this for like, some elements feel like they're for kids, but it's also incredibly inappropriate for children. Yeah, yeah, I think that we'll have to put it on the list of potential films. Check it out and see if it's if it's right for us.

All right, well, thanks everybody for writing in. Keep it coming again. We read everything that comes in, even if we don't have a chance to feature everything on Listener Mail or or or respond in person to everything that comes in. But uh yeah, if you have thoughts on past episodes, present episodes, future episodes, episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, episodes of the Artifact or Monster Fact, Weird House Cinema, other episodes of Listener Mail, it's all

fair game. Uh so, yeah, right in. We'd love to hear from you huge thanks to our audio producer J J. Pauseway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more casts my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,