Is the Necronomicon real?

no one. Um. Today we are doing a special podcast on Yeah, um and uh. For those of you who don't know what the necronomicon is, it is arguably the most famous fictional text ever created in the history of American literature. It is an evil book, one might say, created by are probably my favorite author, HP Lovecraft. Yeah. I didn't realize this. You told me this, I didn't.

I love Lovecraft. My favorite UM stories are Dreams in the Witch House, where he basically equates um physics to Witchcraft, like witches have a really an advanced grasp on physics. It's awesome, it's so cool. Strange case of Charles Dexter Award is probably the greatest one he's ever written. It's amazing. Uh yeah, you gotta read that. And these are short stories. Well, the next one's a novella at the Mountains of Madness. Excellent story. And actually that one kind of factors into

what we're gonna be talking about today. Um, I don't know if the Necronomicon makes an appearance, but what the Necronomicon deals with is all over the place there. So Chuck, let's despite my love of love Craft. Yes, it's painfully obvious to both of us that we're mere full these compared to some other people out there who are Lovecraft fans, right the dogs. And we figured that we were going to get nothing but angry emails for this one, and

they take it pretty seriously. I would imagine that they don't want us to poop on their hero and their icons now, and he's my hero too, but I just I don't. I can do it justice, you know I can't. So instead we decided to bring in who will call the shield, who can who can take all of the angry emails, and that is our friend, colleague and fellow podcaster, Jonathan Strickland. Paramore. Yes, we have a special guest today. Chuck wasn't lying. I was so, hey, strick how's it going?

Hey there, guys, um going pretty well. Thanks for having me on. I I really enjoyed writing both Culhu and the Necronomicon articles, so I'm there as very very cool. You're you're kind of raised on these, weren't you. Doesn't your dad write weird fiction? Yeah? Um, my father's names Brad Strickland, So if you were to do a search for that on Amazon, you would see that he's written quite a few novels, several which fall into the horror or weird fiction category. So yeah, I grew up around

the stuff. This was your life. It's pretty cool, and you're you're dead, predicted Teddy Ruxman. That's true, but has nothing to do with Lovecraft or Cathul or into the necronomic right, No, it doesn't. My parents are t school teachers, so not nearly excited it. As a mechanical engineer, I didn't grow up with Cathulhu and strange beasts that would drag him in saying just to look upon its face, right, yeah, yeahs,

which is something. It's a point that you make in the in the articles you wrote, strict was that these these creatures that the Necronomicon deals with, um, they'll drive you crazy just by looking at them or by you know, interacting with them. Usually terrible, terrible things happen. Right, And at the center of the Necronomicon is cathulu cthulu or there's a pronunciation um that Lovecraft wrote in a letter to a fellow author. Right, and how how is that

one pronounced? You know, why are you hitting me with that all all of a sudden. Okay, let's let's let's be clear here. Lovecraft actually makes a point to say that these otherworldly creatures have their own language which humans are incapable of repeating. That makes it very mysterious and creepy to me. Yeah, it's the same sort of nature as as they. They have this appearance that we are we cannot comprehend. If we were to look upon it

as you say, we would go crazy. So it actually takes a lot of pressure off because you can name things whatever you like. You can put as many consonants and little apostrophes in there, and so you can call it whatever you like. And when people say, how do you pronounce it? You just respond you can't. But Coutulu is one that I think most Lovecraft um scholars would

argue as the appropriate pronunciation. But the way I've always said it, in the way that most of the fans that I've talked to have always said it as Cathulu, right was it wasn't there a rumor early on that the clover filled movie was the monster was the Yeah, that was very early on when that that preview first hit, and there was not even a title for the movie yet. In fact, there was no title internally for the movie.

People could only get little glimpses of what was going on, and a lot of people said, Hey, maybe this is the Cathulu movie we've all been waiting for. This is actually the monster. I wonder I haven't made that yet. I think, Well, there have been several movies that have tried to tap into the Lovecraft universe, and only a few have been really successful. I think part of the problem is that how do you portray a monster that

is so horrible that you'd go crazy looking? That was what I was thinking was, it's probably pretty intimidating for a filmmaker to try and tackle this. Well, there there are descriptions of Cthulhu. What's right? So he basically he has wings. Um, he resembles just by looking at this. Yeah, you think about this, do you think do you think feminine when you hear this? Wings? Huge leathery wings, part octopus,

part dragon woman, part part man. Now I wouldn't say, I just seem so with Lovecraft thing he would say it is agenda that cannot be defined. Yeah, unnamable. Okay, so we'll call him he. Okay, so we will call Cthulu he Okay, So um, Cthulhu in the whole reason we're talking about him is the he figures at the center of the Cthulhu mythos that that Lovecraft created during the course of his writing in Strickland. When was he most prolific, It was it during the twenties. Yeah, we're

talking about just right around that era, late twenties. Um, pretty much. What what's really interesting to me is that Cthulhu became the central of this the center figure of this mythos. But it's not the creature that Lovecraft wrote about the most. Cathula really only factors into a couple of stories, and in fact is described in some as being a priest kind of figure for the Old Ones,

which is this race of creatures Lovecraft created. Yeah, but he never said whether he was a priest that led the worship of the Old Ones or whether he was the priest to the Old Ones. That's that's correct. So that's you know, I'm just gonna leave the rim. You guys are nerd and out all. Well, the point I'm trying to make here is that it's really the fans of Lovecraft who kind of latched onto Cathulu and made

it the central figure of his mythology. Uh, if you were to read all the stories, you would say why. I mean, it is a very striking kind of image, but why this over any other particular like why not? A reason that I think it's mainly because when you do read the descriptions, Uh, they are very compelling, and I think that I think it's also probably one of the ones that are that's easier to imagine than some of the other A lot of the other ones end

up being shapeless. Well that's kind of hard to imagine or mindless um being cosmic being who ruled at the center of chaos, that's kind of difficult to um to conceive of. I think so it's it's very hard to make a plush toy of that, right. I think the other reason that Cathulum has become such a prominent figure in love crafty and lore is that he's still here on Earth. He was, um, he was one of the rulers of Earth along with the great old Ones, right,

that's correct. And then he had a city that was called really a actually still is that sunk under the waters. And what's interesting is that depending on which story you're reading,

you can kind of locate where really is. It's off the coast of South America, and uh, there have been some interesting, weird things that have gone on in in that general area that people jokingly attribute to Cathulhu, uh, saying, hey, you know it's Cathulu snoring, right, Like I know you put a little sidebar that was pretty interesting that they detected with underwater microphones what a very loud, low rip eating sound somewhere out in the middle of the ocean

out there, right, and that they said, oh, well, that's just a whale song. But then marine biologists came in and say, oh, that's not a whale, and that's unless that's the biggest whale in the history of the universe. Right, it was such a loud and prolonged sound that it would be it would have to be made by a creature larger than anything that we currently know of, right, So, hey, Cathula, it's got to be him. It's interesting if you listen to the sound unaltered, it's just this really low rumble

and it goes on for ages. But if you speed it up really fast, it goes really which is why they call it the bloop. There you have it, which is also why a lot of people thought the clover Field Monster was Cathulu because apparently on the on the official website, there was a bloop, was there? Yeah, they tied it into a a fictional um slushy maker Japanese company, and so that had something to do with it as well.

Once people started seeing the supplemental material, they started draw their own conclusions, and of course they turned out to be wrong. But it just shows how imaginative and passionate the Lovecraft failure, and it shows how smart J. J. Abrams is, the marketing genius, master marketer. So let's talk a little bit more about the sure um. So the

text Strickland is often considered a book of spells. Most of the people who get their hands on the Necronomicon in lovecraft stories um end up using it to conjure some of the Great Old Ones. Remember Cathulus, the priests of the Great Old Ones. Um, and terrible, terrible things happened this guy's open up. People tend to disappear in in under terrible circumstances. And um the author. Let's talk about the author of the Necronomicon. He himself, the mad

arab abdul al has read. That's correct, the mad arab abdul l has read A fiend. Yes, the eighth century Opium fiend from supposed to be supposedly a poet who at some point gets this um. Well, I suppose he gets some strange inspiration, possibly fueled by drugs, and writes down this book called the Necronomicon, right, originally called al right, and that that refers to a sound made by night insects in the desert or demons howling, depending on who

you ask. Right, that's correct. And so we have this this text that's supposed to be very rambling and crazy, and uh. Interesting thing is that Lovecraft never wrote the full Necronomicon. He actually wanted to create it, and and dabbled on a shorter versions at one point, right, right, he wrote a couple of passages from an abridged version, and there are there are a few passages that are

that are fairly famous in lovecraft lore. But he wanted to create this mythology where scholars in his world would have certain books they would refer to whenever they needed to study these creatures. Okay, and some of those books actually were real, right, that's correct. Some of the books were in fact real books that have a historical background. Most of them were just figments of his imagination. He created the Lovecrafts, I should say, a Lovecraft's imagination, not

the mad Arab. No, not the mad Arab. So yeah, it's interesting. You're talking about an author Lovecraft who creates this fictional author, the mad Arab, who in turn creates a fictional book called the Necronomicon, parts of which Lovecraft actually wrote outright, So that is the that is the spoiler for those of you who weren't familiar with this

at all. Necronomicon completely fictional, mad Arab, completely fictional. And actually, what's cool about um Strickland in the in the article you make the point that the uh, the Necronomicon has not only survived lovecraft death, it's thrived. You can find

um versions of it on Amazon. Um there's actual cults, whether they realized that the Necronomic con or except that the Necronomicon is fictitious, they still um this this philosophy of the necronomic and still figures very much into their outlook. Then there's other maybe I got the impression slightly nutt of your cults that actually don't believe the Necronomicon. It is fictional, right, but it's it's pervaded into reality. Correct. Yeah,

all of that is right. The uh it's it is fascinating because since Lovecraft left such huge gaps with the Necronomicon, you know, he only wrote little bits and pieces, it's allowed other people to swoop in and fill in those gaps and make money and make money. Yeah, I'll never forget. I was in a bookstore. Um, I was in uh, I think it was South Carolina. I was in a bookstore. This is when I was a teenager, and I'm looking

through the books. I'm just trying to find something to read, and I come across a copy of the Neck Anomicon, and I had to stop and look again because I thought, wait a minute, what why would I find a fictional book in a bookstore? And so I took it down and started reading it, and it was filled with lots of of tortured kind of prose. No, it was terrible. Did bite your hand when you try to grab it? It did not? Reference will come back to that later. No, No,

it was. It was a terrible book. It was a terrible attempt at trying to make a book sound really dangerous and spooky. But it was transparent. I mean, it was obvious that it was someone trying to be funny. All Right, you guys, this reality parts boring. Let's go back into the fictional world of Lovecraft in the Necronomicon. Okay, where are we actually We're no, we're in no particular place. We're just in this version of reality that Lovecraft created.

How about that? Oy? Alright, So within this world you have various creatures, you have various books that all of all of which are bad. I mean, that's just there are people who think they can take advantage of them and gain either power or knowledge or some combination thereof. But it always turns out badly for them. In fact, you kind of wonder why people keep bothering. Yeah, that's really I mean, that's really what weird fiction is all about.

You're talking. When you use the word weird, you don't just mean unusual, you mean incomprehensible to the human mind. Yeah. I think Josh told me off Mike that. A lot of other authors kind of have said that's a bit of a cop out on lovecraft part because a lot of times he doesn't have to end up being real creative with his descriptions of things, and he can just say, well, trust me, look upon it, and you shall go and see or or unnamable. Yeah, and and I think it's brilliant.

But yeah, there's definitely an argument on either side. You could argue that, well, the human imagination is so powerful that if you leave it up to the individual reader, it's that person is going to make his or her own most horrifying creature. And there's nothing that you, as the writer could describe because you don't know that person.

I don't know what would horrify that person exactly. But by leaving it up to the to the reader's imagination, Uh, suddenly you've made a much more effective monster, which is kind of what they did with clover Field. Actually, they did kind of tap into that because they didn't show the monster very much at all, and I thought it was effective. I like the movie. No, I I really enjoyed that as well. I haven't seen it yet both of you showed up. Oh sorry, spoiler alert, there's a monster.

Another thing I thought was cool was that Lovecraft at one point said that there are um only a uh several official copies of the Necronomicon located in I think you listed five different libraries, and uh, two of them don't even exist. So he he dabbled. Yes, he dabbled so much between reality and fiction that I think it worked. It ended up being like, you don't know what's real and what isn't. Dude, we're back in Lovecraft's world. Okay, sorry,

so strickling. The Necronomicon was written by al has red Right, and um he I believe he died fairly horribly. Either he was swallowed up after conjuring somebody using the Necronomicon. I think I remember another story where Lovecraft writes about how he was beheaded but his head was still able

to speak. Um, there there's several different ways that he supposedly died, but either way he died, but his book survived and it stayed in Arabic, which actually I believe none of the Arabic original copies in Arabic exist today. But the UM in nine fifties, somebody else found it and it was translated into Greek. Right, Yes, that's right. There are actually several different translations UM that are mentioned in Lovecraft's stories. Uh, there's Greek, there's there's Hebrew, there's

a few others. There's Latin. I think he said Alias Wormings was a priest that translated into Latin, and then it was banned by Pope Gregory nine. But in reality, this is what I love the fiction. Again, you're not Catholic? Was that not Pope Gregory nine? The nine? Okay, yeah, but Gregory the Night? Uh? In reality that Elias Warmius was actually a Dutch physician, so there was no tide

there whatsoever. Yeah, that was the mixture of reality and fantasy. Um. Now, the the really cool stuff, as far as I'm concerned here is that that he's he's built up a believable enough base that if you were to just read the story without without any other background information, you could totally buy into this mythology. He's really made it very rich and believable. He's he's he's anchored it in reality and um.

And there are lovecraft Ian scholars and fans who will talk of this as if it were all real, as if these Greek and and other translations of the Necronomicon do in fact exist and are in fact in these libraries. Right. Well, I know what earlier we were talking and I thought it was odd that he would use people like Elias warmis their name, which you know was a physician, and then in six Dr John D was an Englishman and a magician, when in fact he was really just an

adviser to Queen Elizabeth. And I thought, well, how strange to use these real people like wouldn't he be found out? But you said that, you know, this is the nine twenties, and there weren't You couldn't go up on the internet and look up who John D was, right, And now you had people who those names would sound familiar, and they think, hey, that does lead leads some credence to this and I and I also compared it to Bram Stoker, who did base Dracula off of the real person Vlad Tepish.

But if you were to look into Vlad tepish Is life, you would see that it doesn't really parallel Dracula at all. You could just see where the inspiration came from. But because you have laud Dre Cool, you have this whole

persona there, it lends your story a stronger base in reality. Yeah, like you guys said, the Lovecraft is a master at mixing reality and fiction, like with the libraries where you could supposedly find the Necronomicon, but also he would pepper um some of the books like on the shelves ire were in the strange case of Charles dexter Ward his ancestor what was his ancestors name, I don't remember either, um, but he there was there were tons of books of

magic and the occult, and some of them were real, like the Rs Magna at Ultima uh, and they would be sitting alongside the Necronomicon. So there were some that were real and some that weren't. Um. And not only did Lovecraft write about that, he would use books that some of his contemporaries had made upright in his books, and they would do just the same, right, they would mention the Necronomicon in their books. Yeah, there was a lot of cross pollination going on at this time, where

you would. Lovecraft loved having friends who were also authors. He was prolific letter writer, and he encouraged his friends to write stories set in his mythology, and then he would write stories there's as well. So you started to get this really rich background that didn't exist in other authors works. Because I mean, in a way, it's almost like writing fan fiction, except in this case, the people who are writing fan fiction are really well known authors, right, right,

But that continues today. You still have people writing within Lovecraft's mythology, and of course, you know, it's expanded beyond just writing books. It's also in movies and television. Right. There's some pretty pretty noteworthy cameos that the Necronomicon has made, most notably in the Evil Dead series. Yes that was it an Evil Dead or just Evil Dead too, No, it's in It's an Evil Dead, Evil Dead to an

Army of Darkness. Army of Darkness actually was my favorite scene with the Necronomicon because he has to approach it on the hill and repeat the Klatu varata and then which the last word isn't that from the day the Earth still? Yeah, that's actually that was the one of the things about Yes, Sam Raimi just loves to quote from other movies and and and science fiction, horror everything.

I mean, he's he's one of those guys who just has like that huge Labrintheian Library of of Trivia instead and so yeah, he brought a lot of that out into those movies. But the interesting thing about the Necronomicon and those and those movies is that it doesn't really resemble the one in Lovecraft stories. Right. It's the Book of the Dead is what they call it, and evil dead and it's a or at least an army of darkness.

It was like this, uh had an evil face. It was like leather bound, but had a mouth and eyes, and that's why it bit him when he tried to pick it up, which is what I was referencing right right. It's actually bound in flesh and written in blood. Yeah, yeah, and it's uh, it's a little different from the Necronomicon and Lovecraft stories. But the Necronomicon, you gotta admit, that's

an awesome name for an evil book. So it totally made sense to to reference it, you know, and a lot of people I think have sort of a passing familiarity with Lovecraft stories stuff, so if you mentioned it, they get the idea, oh, that's an evil book. They don't need to have this wealth of information in their heads. So my favorite reference, um, and you actually pointed out in the article Strick is um the appearance of the

Necronomicon in the Simpsons. You guys see this one. It was in the episode Brawl in the Family where there's a meeting of the Republican Party and Mr Burns goes and now Bob Dole will read from the Necronomicon. And Bob Dole comes to the podium and he's wearing like a black robe and he starts channing in Latin and reading from the book. It's perfect. Yeah, My I think my favorite is when it makes a very very brief appearance in Friday of the Thirteenth, Part nine, Jason goes

to Hell. It's it's just it's one of those things where the camera's just panning by and if you pay attention, you see, hey, that's the Necronomicon from the Evil Dead movies. Yeah, it's just it's just there in in the shot. I mean, there's no reference to it. No one picks it up. Where was it? Was it like Jason's house, Yeah, it's it's towards the it's towards the end of the movie. There's a few different references. I think you also, if you look, you see a crate that's labeled Arctic Expedition,

So fans of horror movies, you'll know what that's from. Too, so awesome. Jason goes to Hell? Was that was that? That was also in Pumpkinhead two? Yep. Also in Aquitine Hunger Force, which we love, and The Real Ghostbusters, The Grim Adventures of Billion Mandy and metal Lock. You don't know that that's that's the that's the cartoon on Adult Swim that details the misadventures of a death metal band called death Clock. You almost said adventures, very nice catch.

Misadventures much different. So this was actually in strict Thank you so much for coming in, dude, you say this, this is one of those every once in a while we'll do a podcast where like this is just the tip of the iceberg. Go read the article. You clearly should go read these articles. If we piqued your interest in all. First of all, go start reading Lovecraft. He's awesome. Um.

He was also an awesome person his real life. He he had a woman that he lived with who was old enough to be his mother, that he love up very much. But people posit that they never consummated their relationship. Is that correct? Yep. He was just an all around weird guy, but really sweet and cute and um not really well I think he does in that nine He doesn't have like uh, yeah, you're right, um, but he he was an interesting character, uh, an incredible writer and

uh Strickland wrote two really good articles on him. So if you want to read more about it, you can go to how stuff works dot com and typing cthulu c t h U l U in the search bar. You could also type in necronomicon, which would be spelled n E c R O n O M I c O and necronomicon you can find both of those articles. And I think if you type you those words in the Google in general, you're going to find a whole world away to you. Just interesting stuff. Interesting way to

waste some time. You dare not speak it and look at it or you shall go insane. And also we can all look forward to the day the stars aligne and the Stone City of Relay rises up out of the ocean and takes possession of the Earth again, and we are all screwed awesome, or as we would say in love Crafts universe, Yeah yeah, kutula fatagan. No better way to end then for that, no better way to

end the than that? All right, Well, since Strickling just said something that we can't pronounce ourselves, that means it's listener mail time. Alright, So Chuck, what do you have for us today? You're just gonna call this the saddest thing I've ever heard. This is from Vic in Lincolnshire, Illinois. It's a little lengthy. If I'm gonna I'm gonna read it fast. Vic is a listener who has borrowed his daughter's iPod and definitely he said, I was kind of

taking it over. That is the saddest thing I've ever uh And he he This came about as a suggestion that we do something on wrongful death lassy bots or just wrongful death period. I don't Back in nine seventy my dad had a heart attack and was hospitalized in the co ordinary care unit. They had trouble stabilizing his heart rhythm and decided to implant a temporary demand pacemaker. I guess in theory, when his heart needed and assist, the pacemaker would kick in and get things back on track.

We went to visit him the next morning. We could tell that everything was kind of crazy in the CCU, people in a frenzy, all kinds of activity, and we stood beside my father talking to him. I was sixteen years old, and I was fascinated with the ocloscope on the shelf above his head, routinely drawing a regular paced heartbeat, now familiar from all the medical shows in the last forty years. Okay, the nurse on duty saw us at dad's bed and quickly came over to clean him up

for the visitors, comb his hair shave him. She was running late and hurriedly plugged his electric shaver into the outlet, the same outlet as the temporary pacemaker power supply. Almost immediately, the heartbeat trade went wild on the monitor. I had my eyes on it the whole time. It first confused as to whether I was seeing electronic interference or actual interference with the beating of my dad's heart. It quickly became clear that it was a ladder. My dad yelled,

almost leaping out of bed and fell back dead. Oh my god, right in front of his face. At sixteen in the hospital because the nurse plugged this thing in. Wow awful, no happy ending here. They tried in vain to revive my father, aged fifty nine. A wrongful death lawsuit ensued, but my mother became too sick to go through with it. My understanding is that the pacemaker technology is vastly improved over the years. I'm not sure if there are other stories like mine. And here's a little

interesting side note. At the end uh in the CCU at sixteen, I noticed four little shelves about seven feet off the ground in the corners of the room. I asked the resident past or what they were there for. He informed me that someone was doing an experiment with near death out of body experiences because of the high quote traffic in that room. Apparently there were cards with little shape on them, one on top of the on

top of the shelves. Have my dad been revived, they would have asked him if he were called hovering above his bed and did he look down and see those shapes? Weird? So that is a side note, and Vic, it's a hell of a side note. This is a long time ago, and I wrote you back and said I was very sorry to hear about this, but it was a great story. And thanks for sharing. And we will definitely add wrongful death lawsuits to the suggestion box for sure. And thanks

for sharing that interesting and awful story. If you have any interesting or awful stories, or you just want to say hi, or what up? Or what what does it mentioned? Unicorns? Maybe sure you can put in an email and send that to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page. Yeah, brought to you by the reinvented

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