Haunted

that drives desperation. To that end, we step into three vaults of the imagination, all constructed from myth and all dealing with one of our worst fears, death m h. The first of all, it contains an archive of a psy ops mission in Vietnam that you deeply held cultural beliefs about the dead to wage psychological warfare. The second vault, a haunted attraction, contains all the ingredients to tap into a kind of ancient cave of fears. How's it going,

Holly good? Those twisty rooms and the vortex room, they genuinely jack with your equilibrium, But you feel like your body is made, like there's a force that's working on your body, like I'm falling to the left or rights we're talking primal mythology here, the idea of a thinning of the veil between two worlds, life and death. It's fascinating if you think about it. Each Halloween we put on a pageant of them a cob we pay homaged ghosts, ghouls,

and the grim Reaper. We even go so far as to submit ourselves to a haunted house, walking through a maze of horrors and mock sacrifices of our souls. There's a lot of elements tied to going into a hunted house. In many ways, it's a ride of passage. It's the hero's journey. It's the going into the unknown and showing that you're grown up and that you're you're an adult and you're ready to take these things on. In the

third vault, we enter the immersive theater production democracy. You may agree with me that what people find the most stridening debate is politics. But first let's talk about the sound of fear, the wonderland of symbols embedded in the simplest of tones. What does this sound mean to you? It could be a leaky faucet, but dig a bit deeper. Think of a water droplet separated from its source, isolated, dripping into an empty bowl, displaced apart from the whole.

These quiet moments, sound is amplified, and so is emotion because each noise we've ever heard has been coded into our brains as a symbol of some larger pattern, a pattern that tells a story. Now with that in mind, imagine it's nineteen seventy and you're a Viet Cong soldier making your way through the jungle in the middle of a night when you hear this. What you're hearing is essentially a haunted house in the middle of a jungle.

The Special Operations Group in the U. S. Army UM wired up a jungle area outside of an American firebase with UM with sound speakers, and one night, it was in the early nineteen in the dead of night, began playing this kind of supernatural ghost show over these speakers, and the idea to terrify UM the Viet Cong infiltrators that had taken up positions in that forest. Oh good. I'm Nathan Mallett, founder and editor of Military History Now

dot com. Military History Now catalogs the strange, offbeat in lesser known aspects of military history, all the stuff that really fascinates Nathan like ghost Heap number ten from the Vietnam War. The grunts of the wheels of the Green Machine the name they give the military. The Green Machine is coming from America with flesh on it. Today is the day for Utility or Wonderland of heroes and slogans. In the Green Machine, a grunt doesn't seek out the enemy.

He goes hunting. The Green Machine plays games like Wondering Soul. Wandering Soul is a tape that has been put out by the Psychological Operations Battalion and ben wa is used by the operating divisions and separate brigades broadcast a rally appeal to the bigcom The tape itself is rather a weird one with the funeral dirge music in the background and they flatter talking to his children saying he's died on the battlefield and he's trying to encourage his comrades

and the rallying joined the just caude. It kind of reminded me of an episode of Gilligan's Island. Um remember the old TV series from the sixties. There were some spies that wanted to chase the castaways off the island, so they dressed up in white sheets and tried to make the castaways believe that the island was haunted. Somebody, I think, and maybe the Pentagon saw that episode and thought this might work in Vietnam. But this wasn't the first time the US military engaged in the theater of war.

They did borrow some of this idea that these types of tactics, so from a from a group in World War Two known as the Ghost Army. They used a lot of sort of audio equipment and loud speakers to fool the Germans post Normandy invasion Europe. So they would they play over the loudspeakers um the sound of like

one Sherman tanks rolling through the forest. So the Germans opposite the American lines would think that there was a massive sort of armored attack waiting to be unleashed on them, and they would evacuate the area, and in reality that

the American lines were, you know, probably thinly defended. And so I think ghost Tape was kind of borrowing from that sort of special operation psychological operations campaign of the Second World War, and they brought it to Vietnam, but they sort of they added a sort of the supernatural

element to it. And Ghost Team Number ten. American forces were trying to tap into deeply held cultural ideas about life and death of the Vietnamese people worshiped the souls of their ancestors, but this wandering soul is very different. It was seved in an echo chamber by the U. S. Army and as broadcast from a helicopter of a jungle.

Some of the sounds are of the poet I guess, presumably Vietcong fighters who had been killed earlier, and they were sort of warning their comrades, you know, you're in a lost cause. This is terrible. Don't let what happened to me happen to you. Go home while you still can. And then interlaced with all of this is the sounds of children calling for their their daddies and and and wives or widows weeping, and just sort of gongs banging and things like that. But it's all sort of echoe

and swirly and kind of just otherworldly. Even if the Vietcong didn't believe that there were in fact ghosts in the jungle with them, even if they realized they were, sort of this was part of a kind of a supernatural horror show being put on by the Americans. Just the sounds and the message, it's just it's just more than a little eerie. So I think even if it didn't have the full impact, I think it was probably unpleasant to be sitting, you know, in the dark, listening

to these sounds. Here's the thing. It was late in the war, and the US was up for trying anything that might move the needle in their favor. It was during the period when they were drawing their forces back out of Southeast Asia, so they were having to do, you know, more with less, and they were trying to hand the fighting over to the Vietnamese. Was a big

part of the US effort in Southeast Asia. UM, And I think it might have been sort of the sort of an outgrowth of that idea of trying to win your friends, you know, win over the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese, but also try to demoralize the enemy. Um. That was a big part of of the American effort in Southeast Asia. How effective was the operation, It's hard to know. Some accounts say that Ghost Tape number ten

drew aggressive fire rather than retreat. And then there's the nearby villagers who woke to a chilling cacophony of music and voices, not exactly something that would win hearts and minds. We think we know about war and fear, and then a footnote to history like ghost Heap number ten surfaces on a site like Military History Now, and it reframes everything. I just wanted to tell the stories about military history

that don't get reported. With all the real and imagined terrors in this world, why would we willingly seek out opportunities to walk into fear, to knowingly give ourselves over to psychological warfare? Yep, we are talking about a haunted house. Talk are are randomly demons whose wars I'm very sure we'll be talking. Most people come to a hommed house to be scared, to be entertained, to have a great time. But there are people who get the deeper meanings. They

get the roots of things, the roots of Halloween. They can see the references that's been Armstrong of another world. In Atlanta, Georgia, it's one of the most popular Halloween attractions in the city, in part because of Ben's commitment to the idea of the hero's journey, something very exciting to go into a scary environment, to almost be struggling with the savage beast in a way to have that

adrenaline surge, but yet to know that you're safe. Every day we suffer bursts of a journal and from anger in our cubicle, from traffic on the road, and our entire way we deal with this is repression. We just repressed it because in our culture it's not appropriate to scream and yell and go crazy. But you can come to a place like a horned attraction and you can let it all out. You can scream and yell, and

it's such a release. It's so much fun. And I often think the Harnhou's actors are playing the role of like a predator. It's like you're a hunter, you know. So they have the fun of stalking prey, if you will, stalking the patrons and scaring them. So it's all very deep when you come and you really think about it. One of another World's big inspirations is HP Lovecraft, the early science fiction and horror author who plumbed the depths of primordial ancient evil, the kind of evil that's deeper

and more abiding than humans can ever understand. I felt a wave of tripe to tangible as a draft from the tomb. It seems humpow like, like the spawn of another dimension, like something only partly of mankind, linked to black gulfs, beyond all spheres of false the matter, space and time. To that end, every square inch of nether world is layered in objects that recall this kind of existential horror. It's like a museum of nightmare images, and

it's world building at its finest. It preys on all the senses, particularly the vibrations that wend their way into your ears. The cool thing about a hunt an ounce that a hunt anounced has over other forms of entertainment is it has the tactile element because you're walking through it. And it also has smell because you don't really use taste much, but you know. But by far it's visual

and sound. I mean, those are the elements. You you see the monster, and you hear the monster, and the monster has a deep, guttural, bassy sound in the case eating size. Sometimes you don't see the monster, you just hear it, and the sound matters. So those two things they really tied together to create the complete package to put someone into a new world. We have a scene in the attraction where you see a ghost projected on a It's basically a screen that picks out the lights.

You can see right through it. You see the back wall, and as the ghost comes out, you know, the floorboards start cracking and snapping, and you hear the actual physical sounds of real wood moving. But there's a rumbling and what happens. We have a thing called a butt kicker, and a butt kicker is a type of speaker, But what it is, it's a huge metal enclosure with a magnet that moves much like a speaker does, you know, in a cone, but it actually creates a physical vibration,

so the entire floor vibrates to the sound. So you hear the sound of this roaring and a floor is shaking and you're watching the you know, the things crack and move towards you, and you're seeing this ghost and the whole thing is is very unreal, and it's taking sound and actually making it physical. You feel that then takes us on a tour of the attraction so we can experience the assault on our senses for ourselves. Now we're walking through the spider room with the spider sacks

hanging down. I said, glad, the lights are still on a little bit good nostration. You're gonna grab your walk out, throwing you very little free foot wide opening fog, and just when you think the worst is past you, that you've cleared the big hurdle, another round of sound waves hits you. This act. They sometimes have step pads and they can step on the creative sound unexpected air blasts.

Every part of the attraction is carefully orchestrated, down to the moment that you enter the parking lot and you queue up in line. This is when an actor known as a slider comes creaming towards you, sliding on his knees, dragging metal tipped gloves over the concrete to create a trail of sparks. So you come here. You hear screams in the parking lot of people being scared. You hear the sliders scraping steel on the concrete, which also your happy fun. I was looking in the love late ron

light when my eye sight. We actually choose to make the outdoor more festive and feeling. Um. We've done everything over the years to make it sound creepy, but what we like better now is we play like Halloween songs. If you will, you know Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult or you know the Monster Mash, or just all kinds of kookie fun songs to create a more of a festival street atmosphere. Because a good haunted attraction rides the razor's edge between Halloween on one side and horror on

the other. Halloween is all the good, fun, happy moments. You know, too far to Halloween, it becomes too kitty, too far into horror. Horror is the thrills, excitement, but too far into horror becomes too morbid, too nasty. So a good attraction, my mind, rides the middle line. But then the closer you get into the interior of the attraction, the more the sound becomes real. I'm about to go into this as we like to call it, it's the click click click of the roller coaster going up, preparing

you for the drop. Once you get into this room, it's darker, it's more moody. You know, there's different announces that you're seeing creepy things. But the fun part is stopping. Now you're about to go. You're about to enter that ancient cave. You're about to face your fears. That also trains the staff and group psychology. They talk about archetypes

and the behaviors that go along with them. So you know that stoic haunted house expert, Well, that person is usually looking for minute details while the hero was up, but under the cover of darkness and terror, that hero may just turn out to be the person who sacrifices someone from the group, shoving them out in front to save himself. They also talk about things like fear of clowns, fear of darkness, the idea that the deepest fear, the root fear, is the unknown. Why are you afraid of

darkness because you don't know what's in it? Why are you afraid of clowns because you don't know the intention the person is masked. It's fear of the unknown? What's out there? There's something out there I don't understand. And this way another world creates a physical maze to work out the mental ones that we run through in our

minds when it comes to the unknown. But what happens when you enter a haunted house that seizes on fears that are all too real in a world of endless apocalyptic realities, unbeh of nightmares masquerading a salvation u this fall one event will perfectly capture the mood of our current collective imagination. They're bringing drugs, creative time and artist Pedro reys invite you to experience the haunted house that

already exists in our minds. Will be left behind. Democracy a house, a political horror that's from democracy and immersive theater play put on in the fall of two thousand and sixteen by artist Pedro Reyes. We were working working in the Brooklyn Army Terminal, which is a massive concrete structure was built for the First World War, and this was a place where bombs and all the kind of uh weapons were made for the first time Second World Wars,

and and it still feels like a military zone. As soon as audience members showed up at the terminal, they were placed front and center in the plays action. You climbed in his van, and his van and the chauffeur won't talk to you. He's playing the right wing white supremacist radio. Then suddenly this van is stopped by the police. This is an army terminal. We don't give towards it unless you have a government issued ide. You and everybody in this vehicle is now trespassing. I'm gonna have to

detain everybody needs vehicle. Who your vehicle to the right right now? Okay, but you're not sure where there is the side of the play or not, because they tell you that it was a restricted area, that the stard shouldn't be going in these parts, that this is a military sounded to the working all the way down the quick let's go where they're treated brutally by these actors,

which are addressed as riot police. Inside the buildings, warrens of rooms presented psychological minefields, and in one of them, the opioid epidemic taking hold in the US was explored with an actor begging for help. I'm gone, I need to perfectly care im not able. Then she tries to persuade people from the audience who helped her to get fields from the doctor because the doctor won't give her

any more guilt. She's very curious because you know, like the people in the audience were refusing to help her. The audience is also in character. It was very interesting to see the psychological dynamics and this way democracy was very much a social experiment. The audience reflected our society's judgment of others and how we tend to regard addiction

as a moral failure. Another social experiment occurred in a boardroom of a fictitious company, and it required participants to either save the jobs of five thousand people or fire them and claim a one million dollar bonus package. And if you decide to take the package, you take the list. If you take the list, you are right and you

are against at a very fancy party. And if you decided to save the workers, you take of the sairs and and then you're the health You're given an apron and you have to their drinks to the other gifts. In a school room of the future, Rais envisioned a classroom with no teachers, just screens with educational avatar who lectured a kind of revisionist history. And in another room there was a future where there were no parks, just

a headset outfitted in virtual reality. And you see the reach park in in through the VR ships because there's no more facts in the future. And and this is something that Trump is doing, you know, like Trump is in terms wants to turn natural parks into places where they can be drilling or they can be tracking or whatever. That seemed like a sci fi scenario three months ago, and now it's happening. Today I'm signing a new executive

order to end another egregious abuse of federal power. The order would review the status of twenty four national monuments created over the past twenty years. Major sites in the West, including the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, are under review. The half million hecked Are protected area is home to Native Americans who oppose possible changes. Rant says that all

of these issues are political. It's the parsing out of what's private public, and what's a shared world, the role that we all get to decide we want to live in, and in part that was the impetus for democracy. Democracy is a kind of very fragile process. When the countries are becoming less rich, people tend to become more conservative. They want an easy fix. It's a it's a psychological phenomena that you want to have the fear of a

father who's gonna come and and fix things. That allows often for the arrival of a siren that will, you know, like just take advantage of the situation and school everybody.

So that's what happened in the United States, what has happened in many other countries also, So it's a global phenomena, which leads to the one problem with democracy as supposed to a hunt of house where you exit and then you know so here you actually the countercasto, and your still in the middle of the color house that studies

unfolding ariety every way. Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of government confusion, government weakness. Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty. Ultimately, democracy is a reminder things don't change by itself, but you have to take part in the process. We in America know that our own democratic

institutions can be preserved and made to work. But in order to preserve them, we need to act together to meet the problems of the nation boldly, and to prove the practical operation of democratic government is equal to the task of protecting the security of the people. My eight year old hates October. At every turn she sees symbols of mortality, skeletons, coffins, and mummies, and every few days she tells me she doesn't want to die, and my heart breaks a little because there's nothing I can do

to change the equation of existence. Instead, I try to explain that Halloween, haunted houses, horror movies, and even our worst fears repeated on nightly news broadcasts, those are just psy ops missions in reverse. I explained that we take this fear that wears us down and we confront it in its ultimate form, deaf, and in this way we

always find our way back to life. No doubt that when I tell my daughter this, I'm also consoling myself, telling myself that staring down the grotesqueries of life is part of the hero's journey to come out on the other side, battled and bruised, but better for it. And the next episode we'll look at how we are all inextricably wired together. We're all connected in a very deep way, and yet we all forget that. Thank you to Nathan Mallett for walking us through the psy Ops mission Ghost

Tape number ten. You can find more of Nathan's research on military history. Now Many things to Creative Time and Pedro raise for discussing democracy with us. You can see more of Pedro's work at pedro rays dot com. And thank you to Ben Armstrong for pulling back the curtain on the fear machine that is nether World, and to Holly Fry of stuff you missed in history class, thank you for holding my hand through a nether World. Stuff of Life is written an executive produced by me Julie

Douglas and co produced by Noel Brown. Editorial oversight is provided by contributing producer Dylan Fagin and Head of Production Jerry Rowland. Original music is by Noel Brown. This episode also featured music by Tristan McNeil, Aaron Grubbs and Dylan Fagan. Additional music is by the band Breathers. You can find more of their music at Breathers dot band camp. This episode also features that Hopeful Future is all I've Ever Known by Chris Zabrievsky, and you can find more of

his work at Chris Zabrievsky dot com. You can find the Stuff of Life on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email us at the Stuff of Life at House to Works dot com. That's Harry and Part of It The Laundry Room te