SECTION FOUR: REANIMATED CORPSES

Chapter Ten: Night of the Living Dead

Chapter Eleven: Frankenstein

Chapter Twelve: The Mummy

Year of Release: 1978

Director: John Carpenter

Writer: John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence

Budget: $300,000

Box Office: $60 million

Like most children growing up in the 1980s, we saw many horror movies on VHS for the first time. The nostalgia of visiting a video store, perusing the covers, and choosing the weekend�s haul holds countless fond memories for us. (In fact, it�s the experience that inspired us to create our Horror Rewind podcast.) Halloween was no exception. The plot of this 1978 horror movie begins with a six-year-old boy named Michael Myers. Dressed as a clown, Michael murders his sister by stabbing her with a knife that looks terrifyingly large in his tiny hands. This shock of a child, ready for trick-or-treating, brutally subverting our expectations of innocence is at the heart of Halloween�s appeal. Actor and comedian Jody Kujawa reflects on his experience seeing the movie for the first time:

Year of Release: 1988

Director: Tom Holland

Writer: Tom Holland, Don Mancini

Starring: Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon

Budget: $9 million

Box Office: $44 million

Everyone has seen a doll. Whether it was your own, your sibling�s, or a well-loved doll at your daycare, we have all been exposed to their glassy, watchful eyes. Much like children, dolls hold a particular innocence which should make us feel calm and safe. Right now, you might be remembering a good friend who went on adventures with you. A Barbie with tangled, blonde hair perhaps, or a porcelain baby doll you had to rock carefully. As ubiquitous and innocent as they may be, dolls also hold an inherent conflict in their soft insides. They are at once an object and a person. We lock them away in closets and boxes, only to later treat them like friends. It is no wonder that dolls, strangely human, strike fear in our collective hearts.

Filmmakers Tom Holland and Don Mancini capitalized on this fear of dolls when they created the movie Child�s Play (1988). The story of a killer, Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), transferring his evil soul into the body of a Good Guys doll, resonated with audiences and sparked a lifetime of sequels. There is just something about seeing that small, plastic hand wrapped around a knife that both scares and delights fans of Child�s Play, but Chucky, the red-haired and freckled doll from Child�s Play isn�t the first haunted doll to terrify people. The idea of haunted or possessed dolls goes all the way back to ancient Egypt. Enemies of Ramesses III were said to have created waxen figures of him, believing his spirit would inhabit the doll. They hoped this strategy could be used to kill him. This is similar to the concept of voodoo dolls or poppets, which could be used to carry a curse or to protect a person. There are some famous allegedly haunted dolls in history, including the Raggedy Ann doll who inspired the Annabelle (2014) movies and a Barbie doll who is said to have supernatural powers.

Child�s Play took inspiration from the story of a haunted doll named Robert. The owner claimed that the doll was possessed, through voodoo, with the soul of someone intended on torturing his family. The doll itself was based on the popular Cabbage Patch Kids and My Buddy dolls of the 1980s. Through this plot the writers wanted to explore the effects of advertising and television on children. Ironically, members of the public protested the initial release of Child�s Play in fear that the film would incite violence in children.

Does media inspire people to become violent? In 1982 the movie Halloween II inspired a man to stab an elderly couple a combined forty-three times.¹ The perpetrator, while admitting the crime, blamed his actions on a drug-induced flashback to a stabbing scene in the horror movie. Child�s Play 3 (1991) was cited as the inspiration for two murders² in the United Kingdom in 1992 and 1993. The perpetrators in the latter became the youngest convicted murderers of the twentieth century.

Prior to the murders inspired by Child�s Play 3 there were already laws in place to try to protect the public from the perceived danger of media. �Video nasties� in the UK were a list of essentially banned or censored films in order to spare the public from excessive violence. The Video Recordings Act of 1984 put stricter censorship requirements on movies being released on video than in cinemas. Banned films included The Evil Dead (1981) starring Bruce Campbell and the Italian horror movie Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Only decades later were films like The Exorcist (1973) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) finally able to be released uncut in the UK.

Horror film protests didn�t just happen overseas. Groups protested many movies in the US including Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). The story followed a boy who witnessed his parents� murder at the hands of someone dressed as Santa Claus. The character grows up to go on his own killing spree at Christmas time. Concerned parents and critics were afraid of children seeing Santa Claus portrayed in such a violent light. Protesters thought the movie would traumatize children and undermine their traditional trust in the mythical figure. Advertising for the film was stopped six days prior to its release and the movie itself had a shortened run due to public outrage.

The Chucky doll in Child�s Play may not have been delivered by an evil Santa as a Christmas present, but was possessed by an evil person in the film. The character of Charles Lee Ray was a conglomeration of three famous killers: Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, and James Earl Ray. Charles Manson was a serial killer and cult leader who gained notoriety in the 1960s. Lee Harvey Oswald was the accused killer of President John F. Kennedy, and James Earl Ray was the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. The character of Charles Lee Ray�s past is explored a bit throughout the Child�s Play franchise and it�s revealed that he, too, is a killer.

While the science on possessed dolls isn�t readily available, we wanted to know how detectives would determine if a Chucky doll could be the killer at a crime scene. We spoke to Timothy Koivunen, Chief of Police and former detective in Eveleth, Minnesota to find out more:

Year of Release: 1984

Director: Wes Craven

Writer: Wes Craven

Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund

Budget: $1.8 million

Box Office: $25.5 million

Amysterious syndrome is said to have been the inspiration for the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). According to a 2014 interview with Vulture, writer and director Wes Craven said:

Year of Release: 1960

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writer: Joseph Stefano

Starring: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh

Budget: $806,947

Box Office: $50 million

Several years before Alfred Hitchcock�s Psycho (1960) caused audiences to collectively gasp, a real monster stalked the rural expanse of Wisconsin. He was the worst sort of villain, a man able to portray to his neighbors that he was quiet, sweet, and even a bit slow. It was a shock to those in the desolate farm town of Plainfield when the heinous truth was revealed in the winter of 1957. Ed Gein, trusted to occasionally babysit his fellow farmers� children, had managed to hide a depravity so abnormal that it would inspire the creation of some of film�s most notorious monsters. Surprisingly, Gein is the spark that ignited both the timid and proper Norman Bates of Psycho as well as the mute and brutal Leatherface of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). It is this duality of the light and the dark that has placed Norman Bates in the upper echelons of horror film fiends.

Robert Bloch�s novel, Psycho, a novelized account of Ed Gein�s house of horrors, was published in 1959. Once Hitchcock read the story of Norman Bates, a man with a mommy complex which charged his sick compulsion to kill women, the famously fastidious director knew he had the subject for his next picture. So certain that his film version would shock the proper filmgoers of the era, Hitchcock ordered his assistant to buy up copies of the novel in order to keep the twists a secret.

The climb for Alfred Hitchcock�s production was a steep one. He was alone in his vigor for the macabre project, eventually financing the movie with his personal money. Paramount Studios, reluctant to be a part of Psycho, finally agreed to distribute the film if Hitchcock waived his director�s fee. The production of Psycho itself was rife with Hollywood drama, later becoming the subject matter of the film Hitchcock (2012) starring Hannibal Lecter himself, Anthony Hopkins. As depicted in the Hitchcock biopic, as well as the podcast Inside Psycho (2017), the making of Psycho became a watershed moment in the film industry, particularly in the relationship between auteurs and the stolid protectors of decency, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). From Hitchcock�s bold insistence that the MPAA allow what was considered highly violent imagery for the era, to the first filmed flushing toilet in cinematic history, Psycho pushed boundaries. Star Janet Leigh (Marion Crane) recounted her time on the set in the 1995 book she co-wrote entitled Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller. Leigh recalled Hitchcock�s unconventional methods, including how she once walked into her dressing room to discover the director had secreted the �mother corpse� there to scare her. Whether this was to test the efficacy of the prop, or to keep Leigh in character, she never knew.¹

The impact of Hitchcock�s arguably most famous and well-received film ripples on. Psycho boasts several of the most iconic sequences in history, including the notorious shower scene. Marion�s shocking murder, only a third of the way through the film, sparked a fear of bathing for generations. No one can watch Psycho and then jump into the shower without a creeping dread! This vulnerability, of being murdered in a common place by a man who most would deem safe is why Psycho transcended the horror films of its time. It is Norman Bates�s (Anthony Perkins) sweet, shy nature that disarms Marion, as well as the audience. He is not a typical monster, a skulking vampire with glistening fangs. Norman appears sincere in his banality, the sort of man who is not sexually appealing to Marion, nor threatening. It is in this aspect that Norman is so similar to his real-life influence, Ed Gein. Both men were able to maintain a facade that ultimately crumbles into brutal violence.

Though one trait of Norman Bates that is dissimilar to Gein is the presence of dual personalities. Gein was indeed consumed by the significance of his dead mother�s opinions and rules, but he was never known to actually embody her voice or personality. Norman, on the other hand, seems to slip between two distinct selves. While Marion Crane waits in the motel�s parlor, she hears Norman argue with his mother. Not the ravings of a madman, but two voices, two consciousnesses. This scene is particularly chilling when watched with the full knowledge of the twist. And in the end, we once again see Norman�s alternative personality modeled after his domineering mother. She takes over Norman�s body. Hitchcock even employs a superimposing film technique to illustrate this phenomenon. The audience is then left with Norman�s lingering, creepy smile which finishes the film.

This strain of the good and the bad harkens back to the original literary monster of dichotomy, Robert Louis Stevenson�s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). In a 2007 study, Kieran McNally described Stevenson�s novel as inspired by several sources: �it drew on theological and literary influences concerning humanity�s primitive capacity for good and evil, Charles Darwin�s simian conclusions from The Descent of Man.�² It�s fascinating to note that evolution was a key point in the contrast of female and male serial killers (see Chapter Three (pg. 13)) and is also integral in the understanding of the age-old contrast of good and evil. While the father of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin, recognized this pull of both light and dark through a scientific lens, Stevenson poetically described it for readers of Victorian literature: �with every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.�³

Year of Release: 1974

Director: Tobe Hooper

Writer: Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper

Starring: Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen

Budget: $80,000

Box Office: $30.9 million

Ed Gein died the year I (Meg) was born. As a teenager I happened across a paperback about Gein at a library sale. This book, yellowed and full of black and white, glossy photographs, sparked my interest in true crime. It revealed the monster behind the movies I loved. Ed Gein�s story, wholly true and wholly awful, is often described as the igniter of nearly every modern serial killer movie.

For the shaping of Psycho, Robert Bloch, Alfred Hitchcock, and Anthony Perkins worked to mold Norman Bates from the proverbial clump of Ed Gein clay. They focused on the duality of Gein�s life and his fixation on his dead mother. Psycho, while groundbreaking, was a film of its era. In the 1960s, Hitchcock and his film contemporaries simply could not delve any deeper into the truly horrific reality of Ed Gein�s crimes, but fourteen years after the iconic film�s release, American moviegoers were becoming more conditioned to watch and discuss violence due to the brutality of the Vietnam War being splashed across the nightly news. Tobe Hooper�s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) premiered to the children of those who had watched Psycho in the theater, providing this next generation with a cinematic yet starkly authentic look at what had been discovered in that farmhouse in Wisconsin in 1957.

It was on the chilly November evening when Bernice Worden, proprietor of the local hardware store, went missing. Bernice�s son, Frank, discovered Worden�s Hardware store unattended. A telltale streak of blood on the linoleum spoke of a violent end. In mere hours an unlikely suspect formed in the minds of the Plainfield police. Witnesses had seen local bachelor, Ed Gein, nervously enter and reenter the hardware store more than once that day. Intrigued by this peculiar behavior, Frank, a deputy sheriff, had Gein rounded up by fellow police. Gein had been enjoying supper with another local family when the cops came calling.

What followed, the subsequent investigation of Gein�s house, lives on as one of America�s most macabre true legends. �Police found the headless, gutted body of [Bernice Worden] at Gein�s farmhouse.� The unfortunate woman had been treated like a deer. Gein had used his hunting expertise to �dress� her body. �Upon further investigation, authorities discovered a collection of human skulls along with furniture and clothing, including a suit, made from human body parts and skin. Gein told police he had dug up the graves of recently buried women who reminded him of his mother.�¹ The search of the house of horrors continued to unnerve the seasoned investigators �yield[ing] more shocking discoveries, including organs in jars and skulls used as soup bowls.�² While several of these body parts were found to be that of another missing local, Mary Hogan, most had been stolen from the nearby Plainfield Cemetery.

While we watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the full knowledge of Ed Gein�s influence on the birth of Leatherface, it was easy to see the comparison of that house in Wisconsin with the film�s fictional lair. When Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) bears witness to the haunting rooms full of both human and animal parts, it harkens back to how Gein�s house must have appeared to those sifting through the horrific finds.

�[Hooper] had heard of Ed Gein, the man in Plainfield, Wisconsin, who was arrested in the late 1950s for killing his neighbor and on whom the movie Psycho was based. So when they set out to write this movie, they decided to have a family of killers who had some of the characteristics of Gein: the skin masks, the furniture made from bones, the possibility of cannibalism.�³ Gunnar Hansen, the actor who donned the mask of Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, explained that the late Hooper had indeed taken facts from the Gein case to develop the frightening family who kills and tortures the innocent teens.

Despite the fact that several countries banned the movie because of its overt violence, and some American theaters quit showings after complaints, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre generated over $30 million domestically. This success led to Tobe Hooper�s rise as one of the film industry�s most well-known horror directors. He went on to direct hits like Salem�s Lot (1979) and Poltergeist (1982).

Over the decades, the film has been regularly recognized as a bastion in the horror movie canon. Like many horror franchises that came later, (think Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is less about the screaming teens and more about the monster. �Leatherface seems to be a palpable somebody, a poignantly confused and overwrought monster who can express himself only in a squealing caterwaul.�⁴ And much like Freddy and his counterparts, Leatherface and his ragtag group of horrifyingly hickish family members have continued to terrorize.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a busy and profitable franchise. There were three sequels from 1986 to 1994, as well as a 2003 remake starring Jessica Biel, another reboot in 2013, as well as two prequels (2006 and 2017). The allure of Leatherface lives on, confronting new generations with the brutal reality of true monsters.

Ed Gein exists not only in the house full of skin and bone in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Leatherface, like Norman Bates, exhibits traits that can be traced back to Gein, who admitted to wearing his suit of skin, as well as masks he�d fashioned from women�s faces. According to an article in Psychology Today �Gein had supposedly hoped to transform into a woman, i.e., to become his mother.�⁵ This act naturally brings Norman Bates dressed in his mother�s clothes to mind, but the literal process of wearing another�s skin has become synonymous with the fictional monster, Leatherface. Leatherface and Bates also share a similarity in how they treat their victims. For instance, Bernice Worden was found hanging in Gein�s shed as though she were the remains of a deer and not a human. This cold indifference of a human, treating them as though they are nothing more than their physical body, is a trademark of Leatherface. He, too, treats his kills as though they are meat. He hangs them from meat hooks and even disturbingly places them in a freezer like we would hamburger patties.

There are a number of ways to classify serial murderers. Holmes and Holmes described several typologies in their work, including hedonistic killers, power-seekers, and more.⁶ Other typologies include organized versus disorganized murderers, and process killers versus product killers. Process killers are the serial murderers who enjoy the literal process of taking a life. They often torture and prolong the act of murder. The Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, apprehended in 2018, is a prime example, as he raped, bound, and strangled his victims. Lust killers like Ted Bundy could also be classified as �process-focused.� Ed Gein killed Bernice Worden with a rifle. There is no reason to believe he reveled in the process of murdering her. This �act-focused� type of killing was done in order to gain her body, which for him allowed the fantasy of �transforming into a woman.� Fellow Wisconsinite Jeffrey Dahmer, a cannibal and necrophiliac, is another example of a serial killer who did not kill for the act but for the after-effects. Like his cinematic father, Leatherface kills quickly. He does not prolong the act. Although, assuming in order to increase the brutality and suspense, Leatherface was given a chainsaw with which to stalk the dark trails of Texas.

There are a lot of psychological questions to ask about Ed Gein and Leatherface�like why would someone feel compelled to inhabit another�s skin? While product serial killers represent the extremely twisted side of this spectrum (collecting human parts!), there are millions of people who practice the science and art of taxidermy. To learn more, we interviewed Lexi Ames, a taxidermy enthusiast, artist, and former apprentice of specimens at Lawrence University:

Year of Release: 1991

Director: Jonathan Demme

Writer: Ted Tally

Starring: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins

Budget: $19 million

Box Office: $272.7 million

There are two monsters in the acclaimed, Academy Award�winning movie The Silence of the Lambs (1991). If we were to use the serial killer classifications laid out by Holmes and Holmes on these fabricated killers, Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) would fall into similar categories. Both men are compelled to kill for a product. Lecter eats the bodies of his victims, and as he�s a class act, he serves them up with the famous �fava beans and a nice chianti!� While Buffalo Bill, far less sophisticated, kills women of a larger girth in order to inhabit their skin. This, of course, evokes the anti-hero of this section, Ed Gein, who shared in precisely the same practice. Gein purposely chose larger women. Both Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden were known to be plus-size, as are Buffalo Bill�s markedly younger victims. Surrounded by the bones, organs, and skin of his victims and those he grave robbed, Ed Gein engaged in any number of horrific acts. It�s easy to let our macabre imaginations run wild. Yet, there is one misnomer that has been perpetuated since his capture: there is no proof that Ed Gein was ever a cannibal. Because of their fixation on female skin, Buffalo Bill and Ed Gein are inexorably linked. Any link between Gein and the well-educated and poised Hannibal Lecter would be a tenuous one. In fact, it was another true monster who resulted in the creation of the notorious Dr. Lecter.

Before he was a famous author, Thomas Harris was a journalist for Argosy magazine. In his early twenties, he was tasked with interviewing Dykes Askew Simmons, a murderer on death row in Mexico. During Harris�s visit to Nuevo Le�n State Prison, he also spoke with the prison�s doctor regarding an injury Simmons had suffered while incarcerated. This exchange with the physician struck Harris as intriguing, especially when the doctor brought up rather philosophical musings about �the nature of torment.�¹ When Harris finished up his interview, he asked the warden how long the doctor had been employed by the prison. The Warden informed the young journalist that the doctor was a murderer, sharing the same fate as his patient, as he was also on death row. This man, who Harris has not named publicly, but is widely believed to be Dr. Alfredo Balli Trevino, had been convicted of the murder of his lover, Jes�s Castillo Rangel. According to The Sun, in October of 1959 Balli Trevino slit his boyfriend �Rangel�s throat with a scalpel in a crime of passion before finishing him off in the bathroom. Balli Trevino cut the body into pieces and buried them to hide the grim crime.�² This poised man of science, who Harris would later describe as having �a certain elegance about him� had been the perpetrator of a brutal crime. It was this dichotomy, not unlike the good versus bad conundrum of Norman Bates, which Harris drew from when writing Red Dragon (1981). Balli Trevino served twenty years before his sentence was commuted in 1981. He spent the rest of his life, until his death in 2009, serving the poor in Monterrey, Mexico. Ironically, the man who inspired Harris to create Hannibal Lecter was known in his community for his large heart, and for not charging the sick and elderly for his medical expertise.

Harris�s novel Red Dragon, containing the first iteration of Dr. Lecter, was a successful novel that spawned a less successful film; Manhunter (1986). While Manhunter underperformed at the box office, this did not dissuade Orion Pictures from capitalizing on the wildly popular novel sequel The Silence of the Lambs (1988). Orion�s gamble paid off, the film released on Valentine�s Day 1991 to both critical acclaim and a solid box office showing.

While Dr. Lecter and Buffalo Bill represent the darker side or the �Mr. Hyde� of The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is the film�s reasonable, empathetic �Dr. Jekyll.� Foster�s performance as a newbie FBI agent on her first, crucial assignment rivals that of Hopkins�s. She won an Academy Award for her efforts, and to this day Starling stands out as one of the more well-liked and memorable horror movie protagonists. She is bold enough to challenge Lecter with his greatest weapon, his intelligence, when she says �you see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? What about it? Why don�t you�why don�t you look at yourself and write down what you see? Or maybe you�re afraid to.� It is her back and forth with Lecter, their oddly dynamic dance of wits, that catapults this movie into so many �best of� lists, horror or otherwise. The American Film Institute has consistently showered The Silence of the Lambs with accolades, including #65 in the best movies of all time, and Hannibal Lecter nabbed the top spot as the #1 villain in AFI�s 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains.

What is it about Hannibal Lecter that resonates with audiences? And particularly as embodied by Anthony Hopkins? As Brian Cox�s Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter didn�t seem to affect a similar fervor. In his study �The Devil Made Me Do It: The Criminological Theories of Hannibal Lecter� J. C. Oleson posits, �there are a number of plausible explanations for Lecter�s uncanny popularity. It has previously been suggested that the character of Hannibal Lecter may fascinate the public because he is enigmatic, fitting several models of serial homicide, while defying others. The allure of the character may also be linked to Hannibal Lecter�s status as a criminal genius.�³

Is it Hannibal Lecter�s high IQ that captivates us? Hopkins�s portrayal as a man with a dense vocabulary certainly subverts our expectations of the mute thugs of our nightmares. Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers were not known for their sparkling dinner repartee. Perhaps it is this stark difference that absorbs our attention. In fact, a serial killer with an abnormally high IQ is not just a fiction of Thomas Harris�s. Ed Kemper, a real serial murderer popularized by the horrifically disturbing performance by Cameron Britton in 2017�s Mindhunter (not to be confused with Manhunter!) tested on the IQ scale at 145.⁴ This would mean he�d passed �highly gifted� and was on the low end of �genius.�⁵ This �genius� used his cunning for evil, killing strangers and family members alike. Rodney Alcala, known to the world as �The Dating Game Killer,� responsible for numerous murders of young women across the country, is estimated to have an IQ of about 170. This would mean Alcala is of the �highest genius� and may explain how he was able to escape capture by the police, change his identity, and study at NYU as a wanted man. Another �gifted� serial killer is the infamous cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, who hovered on the IQ scale near Kemper at 144. While Lecter and Dahmer obviously share in their fixation on eating human flesh, one would have to assume Lecter�s IQ would be of the more Alcala variety, if not higher.

What is interesting to note, is that all of these murderers are well-known in the public sphere, which lends to the notion that as a society we are fascinated with high-functioning serial murderers. As Oleson maintains, �the public exhibits a seemingly insatiable appetite for true crime, and has exalted many serial killers into its pantheon of infamy, but one serial killer commands the popular imagination unlike any other: Dr. Hannibal �The Cannibal� Lecter.� While his superior brain enhances Dr. Lecter�s charm, there are other facets to his villainy. In his article for Psychology Today, Dr. Scott Bonn attempts to explain Lecter�s appeal:

Year of Release: 1931

Director: Tod Browning

Writer: Garrett Fort

Starring: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler

Budget: $355,000

Box Office: $4.2 million

In 1885, an Irishman named Bram Stoker read a rather enlightening article in the literary magazine, The Nineteenth Century. The author, Emily Gerard, wrote of her research on the beliefs of Romanians, entitling the article �Transylvanian Superstitions.� She spoke of a creature not widely known in the United Kingdom:

Year of Release: 1922

Director: F. W. Murnau

Writer: Henrik Galeen

Starring: Max Schreck, Greta Schroeder

Budget: Unknown

Box Office: Unknown

While the 1931 version of Dracula was made with the blessing of Bram Stoker�s heirs, the 1922 silent German film Nosferatu was a blatant rip-off. So obvious, in fact, that Stoker�s family and estate sued Prana Film over the copyright infringement. They won, leading to the destruction of almost every copy of Nosferatu. The vital word is almost, as Nosferatu, like its inspiration Count Dracula, is seemingly immortal. Thankfully, the F. W. Murnau picture survived and has gone on to entertain audiences for nearly a century.

Count Orlok, with his pale eyes and spindly fingers, is yet another take on Dracula. The story of Nosferatu is strikingly similar to Stoker�s novel, complete with its own versions of Jonathan and Mina Harker. And while the film is an admitted copycat, it deviates from the novel in that Count Orlok kills his victims, giving them no chance at eternal life. Nosferatu is even credited with first depicting the notion of vampires succumbing to sunlight, which has been inculcated in our modern day understanding of vampires.

F. W. Murnau is, of course, not the first creative to take perhaps a little too much inspiration from another. It is true that Nosferatu mirrors itself after Stoker�s novel, yet vampires were not a new concept. Stoker stitched together Dracula with the before-mentioned Vlad the Impaler. Like all monsters, vampires have a touch of realism, a humanity that anchors them to the natural world. Nearly every movie monster has roots in reality. The consumption of blood has been dated back to ancient civilizations. From Asia, Africa, and beyond there are examples of blood rituals long before Stoker, or Romania, came to be. In Christianity there is even the symbolic drinking of Jesus Christ�s blood.

Perhaps inspired by Count Dracula, disturbed people, not unlike Nosferatu�s peculiar character Renfield, believe they must have blood to quench their unnatural compulsions. Richard Chase, nicknamed �the vampire of San Francisco� killed six victims in the late 1970s with the purpose of drinking his victim�s blood. Before his reign of terror, Chase was hospitalized in a mental asylum where the nurses called him �Dracula� because he had been found �injecting rabbit blood into his veins.�¹ Obviously Richard Chase held no supernatural powers, nor a biological reason to drink human blood. Yet, �vampire killers� have been documented all across the world from Japan (Tsutomu Miyazaki) to Germany (Fritz Haarmann), so if humans have found reason, however depraved, to drink each other�s blood, we wondered if these instances occur in nature. Are there animals with �bloodsucking� capabilities? And if vampires operate at night, what are the advantages of nocturnalism?

Nocturnal animals are characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. There are numerous animals in nature that are naturally nocturnal including bats, raccoons, and other woodland creatures. Many nocturnal animals have developed or evolved improved eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell. Other benefits of being nocturnal include avoiding the heat of the day, avoiding predators, and avoiding competing for resources. Although the percentage of nocturnal animals is small, scientists have discovered that human disturbance is pushing more mammals to be active at night. According to Kate Jones of University College London, mammals only became active during the daytime after dinosaurs vanished so nocturnalism may be a more �natural� state to be in.²

There are a variety of animals in nature whose food source is blood. Vampire bats use their sharp teeth to make an incision on their prey, then lick the flowing blood from the wound. Although they usually feed on livestock and other animals, there have been cases of vampire bats attacking humans. In 2005, bites from rabid vampire bats were blamed for twenty-three deaths in Northern Brazil.³ Another flying creature, the oxpecker, is an African bird that feeds on the blood left by the bites of insects on a host�s hide.

Insects that drink blood are prevalent throughout the world. With over two thousand species worldwide, fleas are the most prevalent parasite found on fur-bearing animals. They actually helped spread the bubonic plague in the 1300s that caused the deaths of an estimated seventy-five to two hundred million people. Ticks are another bloodsucker responsible for spreading chronic wasting disease and other afflictions. Mosquitos, which are all too familiar to us here in Minnesota, can transmit a number of serious diseases, including yellow fever, malaria, and dengue. This is why they are considered one of the world�s deadliest animals. Bedbugs bite with an anesthetizing agent, and while they don�t spread disease, they can be difficult to get rid of.

Year of Release: 2009

Director: Karyn Kusama

Writer: Diablo Cody

Starring: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried

Budget: $16 million

Box Office: $31.6 million

It is inevitable that fangs and blood will appear when one sees a vampire in their mind�s eye. Thanks to Bram Stoker and the thousands of iterations of Count Dracula that have popped up in film, TV, and even on breakfast cereal, nearly everyone in the world shares a similar concept of a classic vampire. But vampirism is not all cloaks, bats, and strained accents. The act of consuming flesh, blood, or even another�s spirit or essence in order to thrive has traveled from ancient folklore to the big screen. One such parasitic monster is the succubus. We think of nightmares as disturbing dreams, but the etymology of the word can help us understand phenomena like sleep paralysis and even succubi. �Mare� stems from mara, the Anglo-Saxon word for �crusher,� a reference to the sensation of someone or something on the sleeper�s chest. The maras of folklore were small imps or goblins, much like the creature squatting in Henry Fuseli�s iconic 1781 painting �The Nightmare.� Some night visitors may take the form of a male incubus, �that which lies upon� or a female succubus, �that which lies beneath.� Each of these demons engage sexually with their victim and have had a presence in Christian demonology throughout history.¹

In Jennifer�s Body (2009), a horror-comedy directed by Karyn Kusama and written by Academy Award winner Diablo Cody, a succubus preys on a Midwestern town. High schooler Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) embodies all that the myth suggests. She is beautiful, has an innate sexuality, and most significantly, she must feed on humans in order to survive and retain her beauty. When Jennifer recognizes her body weakening, much like a vampire, she must hunt and kill in order to restore herself. As in the legends of succubi, Jennifer uses her sexual charm to hypnotically lead unsuspecting men to their doom. Because she is much like Count Dracula, who can appear normal and even comforting, Jennifer is herself a snare trap and a monster. Though when she is angered, weak, or hungry, the supernatural awakens within and the true, ugly self rears its head. In Jennifer�s Body, the hero, Needy Lesnicky (Amanda Seyfried) researches succubi and finds there is a way to kill them. Again, just like vampires, there are rules under which succubi must operate. While they have powers, they also have weaknesses. Every monster has its kryptonite. This is particularly relevant in films, when the hero must banish the monster through death or other means. As outlined in her research, Needy waits until Jennifer is in a feeble state. She then kills her with a stab to the heart. Unfortunately for Needy, she is bitten by Jennifer in the resulting struggle, so, in the tradition of vampirism, the film ends with Needy becoming a succubus herself.

As we delved into the research of succubi, we became fascinated by the rarity of female monsters. According to the United States Department of Justice, 89.5% of convicted perpetrators of homicide are male.² This led us to dig deeper into female killers, especially those who killed serially. As they constitute such a stark minority, what are the psychological imperatives of female murderers? And are their motives different than their male counterparts? In order to learn more, we consulted academic research on the similarities and contrasts of male and female serial killers. In a 2015 study published in The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, a robust group of sixty-four American female serial killers were analyzed to further our scientific understanding of their psychology. An interesting fact noted in the study seems to support this notion of women using their sexual appeal much like a succubus: �Where data were available, two-thirds of these women had average to above-average attractiveness. This may be a quality the female serial killer uses to her advantage.�³

The motives of the sixty-four female serial killers were grouped into several categories. The highest number of these women were found to be in the �hedonistic� classification. �Consistent with previous research, we found that these women killed for money, power, revenge, and even notoriety and excitement.� Money has long been a motive for female serial killers. At the turn of the twentieth century, plain yet charming Belle Gunness led a number of men to their deaths. Much like the succubus myth, Gunness used her femininity to entrap her prey. Through correspondence she convinced many a farmer to move to her farm in La Porte, Indiana. When the men arrived, cash and valuables in hand, Gunness would murder them and bury their corpses in her fertile farmland. While we can never know what sort of thrill Gunness got from killing, we do know that she gained a hearty pile of money from her deeds. �Baby farmers,� women who killed unwanted infants, also murdered for financial comfort. Amelia Dyer is one such murderess who is known as one of the most prolific serial killers in history as she murdered between two hundred and four hundred children. Dorothea Puente, who killed the elderly and mentally disabled so she could collect on their social security, is another example of a hedonistic serial killer.

Men, on the other hand, tend to kill serially for more deviant reasons. As outlined in a 1995 study, their motivations are more sexually sadistic: �it appears that a substantial proportion of male serial murderers violate their victims sexually, it is important to examine the role sexual behavior has in the killings.�⁴ A sexual impetus in female perpetrators of serial murder is almost non-existent. While females tend to use their sexuality like a succubus, leading men like the Pied Piper to their eventual death, there are very few examples of women admitting to sexual thrill as a reason for murder. One example of this deviation from the rule is killer nurse Jane Toppan, who described to police that she got an �erotic charge�⁵ from climbing into bed with her dying patients who she had killed with a fatal cocktail of medicine.

The aforementioned 2015 study in The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology further contends that this difference in female and male serial killers is most probably evolutionary:

Title: Night of the Living Dead

Year of Release: 1968

Director: George A. Romero

Writer: John Russo, George A. Romero

Starring: Judith O�Dea, Duane Jones

Budget: $114,000

Box Office: $30 million

Many agree that it was in the fall of 1968 when zombies were born. Night of the Living Dead premiered as a Saturday matinee at the Fulton Theatre in Pittsburgh on October 1st. This first showing, mostly attended by teenagers and their tagalong siblings, made cinematic history by ushering in the now ubiquitous depiction of ambling, brain-ravenous zombies. When actor Bill Hinzman playing the part of �Ghoul� stumbled into the graveyard to Tom�s (Keith Wayne) famous utterance, �They�re coming to get you, Barbara!� Hinzman unknowingly became the first modern-day zombie. His performance, replete with a stiff-legged walk, soulless eyes, and silent, twisted mouth, informed the portrayal of the undead for the succeeding five decades.

Reanimated corpses were not exactly new to film when Night of the Living Dead premiered in the late 1960s. The Plague of Zombies was released by Hammer Pictures in 1966, and the representation of a somnambulist or sleepwalker first appeared on celluloid in the German picture The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Caligari paralleled Haitian zombie lore with an individual under someone else�s control. Although not technically a zombie, they had a lumbering gait and lack of cognitive ability. But it is the visual performances and tropes, like humans being trapped by a horde of zombies, borne from Night of the Living Dead, that have spawned everything from the movie Night of the Comet (1984) to the television series The Walking Dead (2010�present).

While George Romero refined the zombie genre in film, the concept of the undead has existed in numerous cultures for ages. References to zombie-like creatures date back as far as the writings of Gilgamesh in 2100 BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Mesopotamia is considered to be the oldest surviving work of literature. It contains the haunting warning �the dead go up to eat the living! And the dead will outnumber the living!� This is strikingly similar to the well-known quote from 1978�s Dawn of the Dead, �when there�s no room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth!� In China, the undead were known as the jiang shi. These creatures killed people in order to steal their life force, or qi. This lore dates back to the Qing Dynasty and the scholar Ji Xiaolan. He cited various reasons for bodies coming back to life including possession or a person�s soul not leaving their body. There was even the belief that if a pregnant cat leapt across your coffin you would be zombified! In Scandinavia the myth of draugr dates back to the eighth century. The draugr were believed to rise up from the dead to guard the treasures in their graves. And in twelfth century England, regarded historian William Newburgh wrote of �corpses [that] come out of their graves.�

Most modern horror movies trace their version of the undead to folklore revolving around the religion of voodoo in the country of Haiti. Voodoo folklore views zombies as bodies without souls. For one to become a zombie, �zombification� must occur. A sorcerer, or boko, performs a spell on a person to kill, enslave, or sicken them. They may perhaps use poisonous powders such as frog or toad venom and tetrodotoxin, a powerful neurotoxin that is secreted by puffer fish. This toxin can trigger paralysis or death-like symptoms and cause others to believe the person is dead. Other steps in the zombification process include keeping the ti-bon anj, the manifestation of awareness and memory, in a special bottle. The zombie will remain a slave to the sorcerer until the bottle is broken or the zombie ingests salt or meat.

In 2014, George Romero spoke to NPR�s Arun Rath about the inspiration behind his zombie franchise.¹ He explained that he �grew up on classic movie monsters� and never dreamed he would be the father of the modern-day zombie, �I never expected it. I really didn�t, all I did was I took them out of �exotica� and I made them the neighbors ... I thought there�s nothing scarier than the neighbors!� Although Romero�s film went on to earn $12 million at the box office (two hundred and fifty times its modest budget) years before Kelly and I (Meg) were born, both of us have had our own personal experience with this groundbreaking horror film. Kelly remembers a Christmas morning when she unwrapped a VHS copy of Night of the Living Dead, a special gift from her father. It was the first horror movie she ever watched, ultimately the catalyst in sparking her adoration for all things spooky. Meg fell in love with the film�s sequel, Dawn of the Dead, before she laid eyes on the original. Dawn of the Dead holds much of the same charm as its predecessor, yet with a bigger budget, therefore a more ambitious representation of zombie carnage. A decade later, Romero was able to add a greenish pallor to his zombies as well as a neon red blood to the victims. This undoubtedly upped the horror ante.

More than fifty years later, the legacy of Night of the Living Dead continues. Zombies have been inculcated into the cultural zeitgeist alongside vampires and slashers. The concept of reanimation, and the ultimate betrayal of a family member or friend coming back from the dead to snack on your brain, still terrifies. Although, now that many of us have become more sophisticated in our viewership, quite a few have come to complain about the inconsistencies of body decomposition in zombie films and television. One target of this social media murmur is the aforementioned AMC hit The Walking Dead. Fans on Twitter and beyond began to ask if the show was accurately representing how a body would decompose over time. In 2015, MTV News even interviewed forensic anthropologist, Kimberlee Moran, to explain the body decomposition on the popular TV series. Moran describes that the zombies on the series �would have all kinds of parts of their body dropping off of them all the time, until they become a skeleton.�² To further our understanding of how real bodies would act under the extreme and thankfully unreal affliction of zombification, we interviewed a medical expert about death and the body decomposition in George Romero�s first two films�someone Meg and I (Kelly) both know (who hides his eyes while watching horror movies and even screams at the frightening scenes!)�Meg�s husband, Dr. Luke Hafdahl, an internal medicine physician at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic.

Year of Release: 1931

Director: James Whale

Writer: Francis Edward Faragoh, Garrett Fort

Starring: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive

Budget: $262,000

Box Office: $12 million

�It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.�¹ This quote from Mary Shelley�s novel Frankenstein (1818) encapsulates our shared pursuit of knowledge. The creature, not unlike his creator, desires to understand this complicated and mysterious planet we all live on. Frankenstein is a novel about science, about its magnificence, but more, about its danger to our society and to our souls. If Mary Shelley lived today, we would have to assume Frankenstein would be a treatise on technology. The creature, borne of our collective pride and stubbornness, would perhaps come in the form of an iPhone.

But in 1818, the nineteen-year-old Shelley, often credited as one of the first horror storytellers, focused instead on the tenuous science of medicine. Her Dr. Frankenstein actively rejects domesticity and convention in order to pursue scientific glory. And, once he achieves his goal, he rejects the creature he has created. Frankenstein is a cautionary tale. It is horror at its finest, exposing the ethical dilemma memorably summed up by Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in the sci-fi horror film Jurassic Park (1993) when faced with scientifically engineered dinosaurs: �your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn�t stop to think if they should.� In the Industrial Age, when resurrectionists were digging up the recently deceased for medical dissection, Mary Shelley was the first to ask in literature if ethics and science could coexist. Her novel, rife with meaning, is also terrifying in its vivid accuracy of the runaway train that is modern science and technology.

Popular in its time, Frankenstein was adapted for the stage by Richard Brinsley Peake. Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein (1823) was attended by Shelley herself at the English Opera House (now known as the Lyceum Theatre) on the West Side of London. Yet another play, The Man and the Monster!; Or, the Fate of Frankenstein played at the Royal Coburg Theatre in London in 1826, and sixty years later the creature was revived for a musical burlesque entitled Frankenstein, or the Vampire�s Victim (1887). In 1910, the legend of Dr. Frankenstein and his ill-begotten creation came to the screen for the first time. The twelve-minute movie, produced by Thomas Edison�s Edison Studios, was shot in a few days by prolific director J. Searle Dawley. The film downplayed many of the macabre elements of Shelley�s masterpiece:

Year of Release: 1932

Director: Karl Freund

Writer: John L. Balderston

Starring: Boris Karloff, Zita Johann

Budget: $196,000

Box Office: $3 million

We all have the image of a bandage-wrapped mummy lumbering about after emerging from its sarcophagus. But when did mummies, in the sense that we know them, become prevalent in pop culture and media? One of the earliest examples of undead mummies is The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, a novel written by Jane C. Loudon in 1827. This early science-fiction work is about an Egyptian mummy named Cheops, who is brought back to life in the twenty-second century. Another woman, Louisa May Alcott, wrote Lost in a Pyramid; or, the Mummy�s Curse in 1869 in which some seeds found in a tomb bring back the curse of sickness and early death.

What was the inspiration for the Universal Studios monster, The Mummy? The 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun�s tomb received worldwide press coverage. The tomb was nearly intact and allowed the world to see what a sarcophagus looked like. It sparked a renewed public interest in ancient Egypt and inspired film producer Carl Laemmle Jr. to find a story similar to Dracula or Frankenstein but based on Egyptian horror. The story behind The Mummy resembles Sir Arthur Conan Doyle�s The Ring of Thoth (1890) in which a mummy is resurrected in a museum. Jack Pierce, a Hollywood makeup artist who also created the iconic look for Frankenstein, was brought on board to transform actor Boris Karloff at 11 a.m. on the day they filmed The Mummy�s opening sequence. Karloff�s makeup consisted of cotton, collodion, and spirit gum. He was then wrapped in bandages treated with acid and burnt in an oven. Filming began at 7 p.m. and ended at 2 a.m., followed by nearly two hours to remove all of the makeup. Karloff found the removal of gum from his face painful, and overall found the day �the most trying ordeal I [had] ever endured.�¹

Boris Karloff�s character in The Mummy, Imhotep, is discovered wrapped like a mummy but having been buried alive. He is brought back to life by the reading of a scroll and sets out to find his lost love. Are there cases of people actually being buried alive? Several Edgar Allan Poe stories explore this fear including The Premature Burial (1844), The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), and The Cask of Amontillado (1846). The chance of being buried alive was a real threat prior to modern medicine. With the absence of scientific certainty, the public, and even medical professionals, were less able to determine if a person was actually dead. Some tests were done on the bodies to see if the person would wake up. These included pinching the person�s nipples and even inserting a hot poker into the rectum. No, thank you! A famous case of premature burial took place in 1891 when a girl by the name of Octavia Smith was presumed dead and buried after suffering from a mysterious illness. A few days later several others in the community came down with a similar illness. It was discovered that their shallow breathing was caused by the tsetse fly, which causes African Sleeping Sickness, characterized by symptoms of extreme lethargy. Octavia�s grave was dug up to reveal a terrifying sight: scratch marks lining the coffin, her hands bloody, and a look of terror on her dead face.

Taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive, led to some interesting inventions. Safety coffins had several features to put people�s minds at ease: glass tops for observation, ropes connected to bells in the graveyard to signal passersby, and even breathing tubes to allow for plenty of air while the person buried alive waited to be rescued. Even though these features were used for decades, there are no known people who were saved by these inventions from being buried alive.² Boris Karloff�s character in The Mummy could have used an alert system to let others know he was wrapped and buried alive.

Ancient Egyptians believed in an immortal soul and thought that embalming, the act of temporarily preserving a body for funeral or transport, preserved the body so that the soul could someday return. The science of embalming began over three thousand years ago in Egypt. Bodies in Egypt decomposed quickly due to heat and bacteria. The mummification process allowed for bodies to be preserved and not disintegrate. There are five steps in the process:³

Year of Release: 1973

Director: William Friedkin

Writer: William Peter Blatty

Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair

Budget: $12 million

Box Office: $441.3 million

In 1973, audiences lined up in droves to see The Exorcist. Footage from that era shows people excited to enter the movie theater, akin to Black Friday shoppers, with smiles on their faces. The footage of audiences exiting tells a different story; people look noticeably freaked out. Some even reportedly fainted or vomited during the movie. Whether you saw the iconic movie in the theater when it first came out or years later, it certainly leaves a lasting impression. The Exorcist was based on a novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty, which came to life after Blatty read an article about a fourteen-year-old boy who was possessed by demons. The article stated that a priest performed an exorcism and the boy was able to go on with his life. The idea stuck with Blatty and the novel (1971) was written after years of research. He was able to talk to the priest who performed the exorcism and changed some details in order to protect the boy�s anonymity.

The exorcism of Robbie Doe, or Roland, has been investigated and refuted by some but the facts remain. In 1949, a boy was hospitalized and more than one priest performed the exorcism ritual on him. The story begins with the family of the boy reporting strange happenings in their home: objects flying around the boy, his bed shaking, and scratching noises in the walls. Their local pastor put them in touch with a priest who claimed to have witnessed the same phenomenon when around the boy. On August 19th, 1949, The Evening Star in Washington, D.C., featured the article � Priest Freed Boy of Possession by Devil, Church Sources Say.�¹ The article opens by saying, �A Catholic priest has successfully freed a fourteen-year-old Mount Rainier, Maryland, boy of reported possession by the devil here early this year, it was disclosed today.� The article also states that the boy was studied at both Georgetown University Hospital and St. Louis University.

What really happened to Robbie Doe? According to the book Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism,² author Thomas B. Allen says �the consensus of today�s experts� is that �Robbie was just a deeply disturbed boy, nothing supernatural about him.� Another writer, Mark Opsasnick, states �Roland Doe was simply a spoiled, disturbed bully who threw deliberate tantrums to get attention or to get out of school.�³ Religious experts insist that true demonic possession cannot be explained by psychiatry. Whether this case was true or not, it certainly inspired The Exorcist novel and film, which sparked a large public interest in exorcisms and Catholicism.

Are there other documented examples of exorcisms? The exorcism of Anneliese Michel is another well-known case which served as the basis for the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005). When Anneliese was sixteen years old she suffered a seizure and was later diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, a chronic condition. The seizures associated with this disorder can cause hallucinations, amnesia, and unprovoked fear or anxiety. She was later diagnosed with depression and spent years being treated with medication. After several years, Anneliese developed an aversion to religious objects and claimed to hear voices. She showed aggressive traits, harmed herself, and ate insects while hospitalized. She and her family became convinced that she was possessed by a demon and appealed to the Catholic Church to have an exorcism performed on her. In 1975, permission was granted and exorcism sessions were conducted by two priests over the course of ten months. In 1976, Anneliese died of malnutrition and dehydration. Her autopsy found that she weighed only sixty-eight pounds and had pneumonia at the time of her death. The priests and her parents were all found guilty of negligent homicide, a charge brought against those who knowingly allow someone else to die when it could have been prevented, and were sentenced to six months in jail.

There are other, more recent examples of exorcisms gone wrong. In 2003, an autistic eight-year-old boy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was killed during an exorcism by church members who blamed a demonic possession for his disability. In 2005, a young nun in Romania died at the hands of a priest during an exorcism after being bound to a cross, gagged, and left for days without food or water in an effort to expel demons. In 2010, a fourteen-year-old boy in London, England, was beaten and drowned to death by relatives trying to exorcise an evil spirit from him.

Can the symptoms of possession be medically explained? Several disorders have been associated with possession including Tourette�s syndrome and schizophrenia because of symptomatic erratic and psychotic behavior. Possession can also be linked to dissociative identity disorder with about 29 percent of those with the disorder identifying themselves as demons. Many mental and mood disorders could cause the psychological symptoms of possession.

Besides the mental health aspect, there are some physical presentations of being possessed. Some victims of possession report words appearing on their skin. Doctors believe this can be explained by dermatographic urticaria, a disorder that translates to �writing on the skin.� Those with this disease can create welt-like lines on their skin just by applying some pressure. This could appear quite worrying to anyone with no knowledge of the condition. Another physical symptom in possession cases is the vomiting of objects. This could be explained by an eating disorder known as pica. People who suffer from this disorder are known to eat non-nutritive things such as dirt, glass, and other items.

What does an exorcism entail? According to the Catholic Church:

Year of Release: 1959

Director: William Castle

Writer: Robb White

Starring: Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn

Budget: $250,000

Box Office: $2.9 million

Imagine sitting in a movie theater watching a horror film. You�re involved in the plot, feeling a little scared, but then you start to feel something else . . . a tingle. It seems that your whole seat is vibrating. Suddenly a skeleton emerges from below the screen of the theater! The plot of the movie seems to have come to life right there with you. This may sound far-fetched, but it�s exactly the kind of tactics that William Castle used to promote his films.

The 1959 film The Tingler, starring horror icon Vincent Price, focuses on a parasite that attaches itself to humans and feeds on their fear. The writer of the script, Robb White, was inspired by an encounter with a centipede while living in the British Virgin Islands. He likely saw an Amazonian giant centipede which can grow up to twelve inches in length. These animals are carnivores and feed on anything they can overpower and kill. At least one human death can be attributed to these giant centipedes.¹ A nineteenth-century Tibetan poet warned his fellow Buddhists, �if you enjoy frightening others, you will be reborn as a centipede.�² The plot of The Tingler follows that thinking. The movie posits that these centipede-like creatures are part of our bodies and that they feed on our fear. The more fear we have, the bigger the parasite grows. It produces a tingling sensation, eventually crushing its host�s spine. The only way to defeat this dreaded beast is to scream.

Are there examples of creatures that become part of other beings in nature? One such creature is the Cymothoa exigua, or tongue-eating louse. It is exactly what it sounds like in that it eats the tongue of its host and replaces it. This is the only known parasite that completely replaces a part of the host animal. More than forty species of fish have been known to be infected with this creature.³ Cookiecutter sharks were originally known as demon whale-biters and are considered ectoparasites because they attach themselves to the outside of other animals to feed, leaving neat, round bite marks. Because of their preferred environment these parasites rarely come into contact with humans but have been implicated in several attacks. One noted case involved the victim recovering for nine months from the bite after having to get a skin graft procedure.⁴

Year of Release: 2017

Director: Jordan Peele

Writer: Jordan Peele

Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams

Budget: $4.5 million

Box Office: $255.4 million

Every so often a horror movie comes along that immediately leaves a profound and changing impact on Hollywood. In February 2017, Get Out was released to both critical praise and box-office success. Written and directed by Jordan Peele, who was best known as a comedian, Get Out snagged four Academy Award nominations. This is a lofty feat for a horror film. Peele went on to be the first African American in history to win Best Original Screenplay. The film�s cultural impact looms large, as it is an exploration of race and class tied up in a scary, and often humorous, bow. Peter Debruge of Variety described Get Out�s complicated appeal:

Year of Release: 1983

Director: Lewis Teague

Writer: Don Carlos Dunaway, Lauren Currier

Starring: Dee Wallace, Daniel Hugh-Kelly

Budget: $8 million

Box Office: $21 million

Just the name Cujo conjures images of snarling teeth and bestial violence. Ever since Stephen King�s novel debuted in 1981, Cujo has come to describe any sort of vicious dog. While the TV series Lassie (1954�1974), and films like 101 Dalmatians (1961) and Beethoven (1992) showcase the lovable traits of human�s best friend, King�s novel and its film version Cujo (1983) depict what happens when dogs go bad. In the first scenes of the film, Cujo appears how we would normally assume a dog to be. He seems happy and curious, enjoying a summer day in the fields of Maine. Lassie�s day would have ended there, with nothing more treacherous than perhaps having to save a child who�d fallen down a well. But for Cujo, this is when the horror begins. On a hunt for a spry rabbit, Cujo sticks his fluffy head into a cave. Suddenly, a bat bites poor Cujo on the nose! While these sorts of misadventures happen in any number of children�s movies (remember when Milo the cat gets his lip pinched by a crab in Milo and Otis (1986)? Cujo is a horror film from the get-go. It is this bat�s bite that sets in motion the tragic story of Cujo the dog and the unfortunate humans around him.

Bats have long been characterized as villains. Count Dracula and his contemporaries could transform into the winged creatures, spreading vampirism across the lands of Europe and beyond. In The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) a victim is murdered by a large, bloodthirsty bat, secreted in his room for the purpose of his demise. A bat also attacks in Suspiria (1977), getting caught in the long hair of main character Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper). So, what is it about bats that cause many of us to shudder? Biologist Elizabeth Hagen can guess why people have a natural aversion to the nocturnal animals. �Most people are afraid of bats because they think that all bats have rabies.�¹ This, of course, is the case in Cujo and perhaps this story has perpetuated the myth that bats are more likely to carry rabies than other animals. Hagen insists that in reality �very few bats have rabies.�

Year of Release: 1990

Director: Frank Marshall

Writer: Don Jakoby, Wesley Strick

Starring: Jeff Daniels, Julian Sands

Budget: $22 million

Box Office: $53.2 million

Spiders are scary. Their spindly legs, tiny fangs, and bulbous group of eyes terrify. It�s quite nearly a fact, as they have long been derided in popular culture. For every Spider-Man there are dozens of spider-centric horror movies, think Tarantula (1955), The Giant Spider Invasion (1975), and Eight Legged Freaks (2002). According to Claire McKechnie in her study for the Journal of Victorian Culture, spiders were once observed as being associated with �ingenuity and industry�¹ but as gothic literature ascended in popularity through the late Victorian age, the spider became emblematic of the dark and mysterious. �Much maligned as the unfamiliar Other, the spider caused�and mitigated�anxieties about the limits of the human.� Perhaps it is this �otherness� that is at the heart of our collective fear of spiders. In a 1991 study at the City, University of London, Graham Davey concluded that it was, indeed, their distinctly non-human differences that instill fear. �It turns out that it is not so much a fear of being bitten, but rather the seemingly erratic movements of spiders, and their �legginess.� Davey said animal fears may represent a functionally distinct set of adaptive responses which have been selected for during the evolutionary history of the human species.�² This makes sense, as the �erratic movements� of spiders, or other creatures, would have tipped off our ancestors to potential dangers. Whatever the reason, as we sift through research for this chapter, we feel as though spiders are scrambling up our spines!

�A return to the spoofy scares of the �50s drive-in movies,�³Arachnophobia hit theaters in July of 1990. Starring Jeff Daniels as spider-phobic Dr. Ross Jennings and John Goodman as a goofy yet determined exterminator, Arachnophobia was a Disney produced picture with a sizable budget. In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Daniels explained the tone they were going for. �We don�t have chainsaws going through necks and blood spurting. It�s scary, but this is not The Attack of the Killer Spiders. We approached it as a comedy with a couple of thrills. We knew we had the thrills in there, so we worked hard to make sure the movie had a sense of humor about itself.� The humor, he said, �kind of relaxes the audience, so that we can come in and get them again.�⁴ So don�t let the Disney name and humorous bent fool you, the spiders in Arachnophobia play upon our shared fears of spiders� �otherness.� The film starts in the Amazonian rainforest where enormous dead spiders are literally falling from towering trees. After an entomologist dies from a spider bite his body is sent back to his hometown in America. This concept of dying from a spider bite, particularly in the Amazon, is not fiction. A small arachnid called the wandering spider is considered one of the deadliest animals in the Amazon. If disturbed by humans it will bite. �The venom of the spider causes extreme pain and inflammation, as well as loss of muscle control which might lead to respiratory paralysis and death.�⁵ Before an antidote was created in 1998, fourteen people were killed by the wandering spiders� bites. In Arachnophobia, one deadly spider, much larger than the real wandering spider, is mistakenly sealed in with the corpse of the entomologist, which becomes the catalyst to spiders running amok in the sleepy, idyllic town of Canaima, California.

In the film, the venomous spiders come from outside of the country, but it is vital to note that America is home to deadly spiders, too. A study of American spider bites between 1934 and 2014 concluded that two such species were to blame for nearly all spider-related human injury or death. These are Loxosceles reclusa (brown recluse) and Latrodectus mactans (black widow). �A brown recluse bite can take up to six weeks to heal, and in serious cases, patients can take months to recover from necrotic ulcers, fever and general malaise.� In the case of black widows:

Year of Release: 1963

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writer: Evan Hunter

Starring: Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren

Budget: $3.3 million

Box Office: $11.4 million

If dogs are a ubiquitous piece of our cultural landscape, then we are positively drowning in birds. Estimating how many birds there are on Earth proves to be difficult, but a conservative guess would be about one hundred billion.¹ (Meg gasps in horror!) Birds perch on our mailboxes, eat seed from our feeders, and scrounge for food in our picnic baskets. They are everywhere, whether we live in the bustling city center of London or on a rural farm in the Midwest of America. Birds are often seen as little more than an aspect of the background; they exist on the roads, up in telephone poles, swarming trees, even as pets in gilded cages. It is this prevalence that creates the unsettling question of what would happen if birds became malicious. Unlike spiders, snakes, or fellow-winged bats, birds are seen by nearly every human every single day. One is to assume that this omnipresence creates a sense of safety, that we consider birds to be harmless as they are constantly within view. We even delight in spotting different species. Yet, we have to wonder, are we watching the birds, or are they watching us?

Daphne Du Maurier, author of the well-known gothic novel Rebecca (1938), asked this very question in her novella The Birds published in her story collection The Apple Tree (1952). In The Birds, a small town in Cornwall, England is suddenly attacked by seabirds. The attacks are brutal with no answer as to why. Unlike Arachnophobia in which the catalyst of the film is an Amazonian spider coming to the United States, and in Cujo in which a dog is bitten by a rabid bat, the bloodthirsty birds of The Birds have no specific trigger or reason for their brutality. Perhaps it is this randomness that creates a whole new layer of horror to the trope of deadly animals.

Alfred Hitchcock seemed to think so. In 1940 he had adapted Du Maurier�s Rebecca into a successful picture starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, so it was no wonder he dove back into Du Maurier�s source material, choosing to base another one of his suspenseful films on her novella. Before hiring screenwriter Evan Hunter to adapt and tweak the plot of The Birds, Hitchcock did his own research on a real-life bird �attack� in California. In 1961, a few mere weeks after this incident, the director requested news copy from the Santa Cruz Sentinel to study.

He read of the eerie morning of August 18th, 1961, when residents of Capitola, California, a smaller community on the coast of Monterey Bay, awoke to a frightening discovery. Droves of sooty shearwaters, a medium sized seabird native to the area, were acting erratically. Some crashed into rooftops, windows, and cars. Others flopped, dying in the streets, while more vomited their fish dinners into the grass. It was a short incident, but one that terrified and traumatized those who had witnessed this mass bird hysteria. Desperate to find an answer for this sudden behavior change of the seabirds, scientists hypothesized that domoic acid poisoning could be to blame. This was never proven, but it is a viable suggestion. Domoic acid is a neurotoxin produced by algae. These algae can then accumulate in shellfish, sardines, and anchovies. When animals or humans ingest this toxin, which was ingested by the shellfish, their brain is affected, causing seizures and even death. �Domoic acid is a tricarboxylic amino acid that is classified as an excitatory amino acid (along with the dicarboxylic amino acids glutamic acid and aspartic acid). It acts through the inotropic non-NMDA receptor and especially affects the hippocampus and amygdala of the brain. The time from ingestion to intoxication can range from minutes to hours.�² Seabirds would undoubtedly be susceptible to this type of poisoning, and the description of the event in August of 1961 mirrors the listed animal symptoms of domoic acid poisoning: head weaving, seizures, bulging eyes, mucus from the mouth, disorientation, and death. In 1991, domoic acid was the official cause of death for hundreds of brown pelicans and cormorants in Monterey Bay, on the same beaches the peculiar bird activity had played out exactly thirty years earlier. A bird attack in 2006 was also attributed to domoic acid poisoning when a brown pelican burst through the windshield of a moving car on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Year of Release: 1982

Director: Tobe Hooper

Writer: Steven Spielberg

Starring: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson

Budget: $10.7 million

Box Office: $121.7 million

When we were kids many a late night was spent imagining the potential horrors that could possibly plague us. We both loved horror movies and the feeling of being scared. Fueling that fire was the movie Poltergeist (1982). Seeing a realistic portrayal of a family on screen helped transport us to the world and imagine ourselves in Carol Anne�s position. A creepy clown doll coming to life? Hearing voices through the television? A scary tree pulling us out of our beds? These all seemed like real possibilities after seeing this movie!

The term poltergeist is German for �noisy ghost.� These ghosts are thought to be responsible for physical disturbances such as loud noises, objects being moved, and even some physical attacks. They haunt particular people instead of places. Some claims of poltergeist activity have been explained by psychological factors including illusions, memory lapses, and wishful thinking. We interviewed Jenny Melton and Blaine Duncan, investigators and researchers for the Twin Cities Paranormal Society, about modern ghost detecting techniques.

Year of Release: 1980

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Writer: Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall

Budget: $19 million

Box Office: $44.4 million

The iconic and terrifying imagery of The Shining (1980) continues to seep into our cultural experience. �Heeeere�s Johnny!� There is manic and wide-eyed Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), ax in hand, fitting his face through the broken door. There are the two dead girls dressed in proper blue dresses (Louise and Lisa Burns) harkening for us to come �play forever and ever.� There is the elevator opening slowly to reveal a deluge of blood. These beautifully macabre shots did not come without sacrifice. Director Stanley Kubrick was methodical, known to be demanding and difficult to work with. Just the principal photography on the film took over a year to complete, and rehearsals stretched on. Nicholson endured six weeks of practice on the bar scene alone, and Shelley Duvall, who portrayed Wendy Torrance, was said to have been so stressed by Kubrick and the long days of work that her hair began to fall out.

This hard work ultimately paid off, as The Shining became a critical darling. While its legacy continues as one of the most recognizable and well-loved horror films of modern cinema, it is well-known that Stephen King was less than impressed by Stanley Kubrick�s take on his 1977 novel. Kubrick took creative license, altering quite a few aspects of the source material. This includes smaller tweaks, like changing the weapon from a croquet mallet to an ax, and larger overhauls, like focusing less on Jack�s alcoholism and more on his inherent creepiness. While comparing and contrasting the film and the novel could fill an entire a book, we agree that both King and Kubrick created epic stories of ghosts, isolation, and madness. Or, perhaps, The Shining is simply about a man with writer�s block? We can relate, because all work and no play make Kelly and Meg dull girls, too.

Ghosts haunt the Overlook Hotel in The Shining but what about the actual hotel the novel was based on? The Stanley Hotel, where Stephen King initially got inspired to write The Shining, is reportedly haunted. It�s in Estes Park, Colorado, and was built in 1909. When King and his wife arrived at the hotel, it was closing down for the season and they were the only overnight guests staying there. They ate dinner in an empty dining room while prerecorded orchestra music played. They stayed on the spacious, and eerily empty, second floor. King woke up that night from a terrifying dream about his three-year-old son being chased through the corridors of the hotel. The combination of the real-life setting and the nightmare inspired him to write the now famous book. Room 217 is thought to be haunted by Elizabeth Wilson, the hotel�s head housekeeper. During a storm in 1911, she was injured during an explosion as she was lighting the lanterns in the room. She survived, though she broke both of her ankles. Guests report seeing the original owner and his wife on the staircase, a piano playing itself, and lights flickering on and off.

Year of Release: 2002

Director: Gore Verbinski

Writer: Ehren Kruger

Starring: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson

Budget: $48 million

Box Office: $249.3 million

In 1991 the Japanese novel Ringu was published and became a phenomenon that inspired numerous films, video games, and a television series. The story focuses on Sadako, a girl who has been missing for decades, and a mysterious videotape that kills anyone who watches it. The 2002 adaptation changes the character name to Samara but the plot is very similar.

Ringu was based on the story of Okiku,¹ who died in a well outside of a castle in Japan. She was the servant to a samurai named Tessan Aoyama, and Aoyama took a particular liking to her. He fell in love with her but his feelings weren�t reciprocated. In one version of the story, Okiku ended her own life by throwing herself down the castle�s well, believing she had no other way out. In another version, Aoyama threw her down the well after she refused to be with him. In the wake of Okiku�s death, she was said to crawl out of the well and appear to Aoyama on a nightly basis. Aoyama was driven insane by the vengeful ghost�s screams in the night. Drawings of Okiku depict her as looking very similar to Sadako/Samara, with flowing black hair and a long white dress. This is the general depiction of a person who has died under unnatural circumstances in Japan: these ghosts are referred to as Yūrei, translating to either �faint soul� or �dim spirit.� These tragic women are buried in white dresses, with their hair let down.

It is revealed in The Ring that you could survive in a well with only water for seven days, hence the phone call revealing when you will die after watching the cursed videotape. Is this scientifically accurate? According to an article in Scientific American an otherwise healthy individual has been known to live up to forty days without food.² There are cases though of overhydrated people dying within ten days.

Another aspect of The Ring is subliminal messages. When Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) watches the deadly video, she is exposed to sudden, nearly imperceptible imagery. Could hidden messages cause us to act in a certain way? Subliminal influence can be traced back to the fifth century BCE. In ancient Greece, persuasive techniques were used in speeches to try to influence others.³ The methods of logos, pathos, and ethos are still taught today in public speaking courses around the world. Aristotle believed that using these three �artistic proofs� could convince listeners to change their behavior, their thinking, or their actions. Logos is the appeal to logic. Speakers or advertisers use logos to state facts and give statistics. Pathos is the appeal to emotions. Imagery or stories that make us feel something use pathos. Ethos is the appeal to our ethics. Speakers will show their credibility and believability through ethos.

In 1943, the US government began embedding subliminal messages into mainstream advertising. �Buy Bonds� was one such message that the public was unknowingly inundated with to try to get them to help with the war effort. In 1957, a marketing expert faked a study that said popcorn and soda sales increased after he flashed the words �Eat Popcorn� and �Drink Coca-Cola� on the screen during movies. Although he admitted to doctoring the data, there do seem to be some studies that show that subliminal messages can make an impact on people�s brains.⁴ When subjects are viewing subliminal messages, there is a change in activity levels in various parts of the brain including the amygdala; where emotions are processed, the insula; the part of the brain that controls conscious awareness, the hippocampus; where memories are processed, and the visual cortex. Studies in the 1990s and 2000s showed that subliminal messages can have an effect on people�s perception and can even affect academic performance. Several movies and TV shows explore the effects of subliminal messages and their possible negative effects. A Clockwork Orange (1971) shows a future in which aversion therapy is used to rehabilitate criminals. The famous, uncomfortable scene shows a man with his eyes held open being forced to watch violent imagery. In the 1988 movie They Live, subliminal messages are used to keep the general public subdued. People are being controlled by skull-faced aliens who only want humanity to �obey.� Our favorite TV show, The X-Files, focuses on subliminal messages in the episode entitled �Blood.� Townspeople are influenced by messages appearing on electronic devices that drive them to murder.

Year of Release: 1954

Director: Jack Arnold

Writer: Harry Essex, Arthur A. Ross

Starring: Richard Carlson, Julia Adams

Budget: Unknown

Box Office: $1.3 million

At a party one night during the filming of Citizen Kane (1941) Hollywood producer William Alland heard the tale of a half-human, half-fish creature. The story goes that an amphibious man would emerge from the Amazon River once a year to steal a woman from a local village. The woman would be taken back into the river and was never seen again. This story sparked Alland�s imagination and in 1954 Creature from the Black Lagoon was released.

The story follows a group of scientists who are on an expedition to the Amazon. They find fossils that look human but with webbed hands and feet. Is it possible for humans to have webbed hands or feet? It is possible although extremely rare. Only one in three thousand children are born with this condition. How does it happen? While in the womb during the sixth or seventh week of pregnancy, a child�s hands and feet begin to split and form fingers and toes. When this doesn�t happen, the skin between fingers and toes remains combined together. Webbing can be associated with hereditary defects of both Down and Apert syndromes, which lead to unusual development of the bones in the hands and feet. Many people born with webbed fingers or toes can have surgery to separate them either at birth or later in life.

Year of Release: 1975

Director: Steven Spielberg

Writer: Peter Benchley

Starring: Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss

Budget: $9 million

Box Office: $470.7 million

Beachgoers are tormented by a man-eating great white shark in Jaws. Although the town of Amity in the film was fictional, movie fans distinctly remember avoiding the water after seeing the blockbuster in June of 1975. California native Cheri Gray Pierce recalls the feeling of the time. �I was just finishing up my sophomore year of high school and was spending a lot of time at the beach that summer. I remember a lot of people being freaked out about going in the water, hearing a lot of them breaking out in that �shark music� while we were basking in the sun.�

Based on Peter Benchley�s 1974 novel, Jaws�s journey to the screen was not an easy one. The film quickly went over budget because of its ambitious creature designs. The animatronic sharks developed for the shoot malfunctioned so often that director Steven Spielberg chose to rely on suggestion, as well as composer John Williams�s iconic score, to stir dread in viewers� hearts. This choice ultimately paid off, an example of the shadowy, less-is-more horror filmmaking that critics love. While the larger-than-life shark in Jaws is memorable, the film itself is a behemoth. Considered the first summer blockbuster, Jaws opened in over four hundred and fifty theaters after an expensive promotional campaign. Because of its massive success, this model of opening to a wide, summer audience became an American tradition. Actor and comedian Jody Kujawa recalls seeing the movie as a kid:

Year of Release: 1979

Director: Ridley Scott

Writer: Dan O�Bannon

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt

Budget: $9 million

Box Office: $104.9 million

Alien is set in the year 2122. The writer, Dan O�Bannon, found inspiration from many other classic horror and science-fiction movies including The Thing from Another World (1951) and Planet of the Vampires (1965) while writing the script. The film was pitched as �Jaws in space� and was also described as �The Texas Chainsaw Massacre of science fiction.� That was a lot to live up to! Did they deliver on those promises? Audiences would say yes. The movie was a box-office success and inspired numerous sequels, books, games, and toys. The movie was also critically acclaimed, receiving many positive reviews. Roger Ebert noted an interesting point about the cast of the movie in his review:

Year of Release: 2015

Director: Robert Eggers

Writer: Robert Eggers

Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson

Budget: $4 million

Box Office: $40.4 million

The Witch (2015), set in 1630s New England, follows a family who are banished from their town over a religious dispute. One of the earliest records of a witch dates back to the Bible. The book of 1 Samuel, thought to be written between 931 BCE and 721 BCE, tells the story of King Saul looking for the Witch of Endor to summon the dead prophet Samuel�s spirit to help him defeat the Philistine army. The witch raises Samuel, who then prophesies the death of Saul and his sons. The next day Saul�s sons die in battle and Saul dies by suicide. Other Old Testament verses condemn witches, such as Exodus 22:18, which says, �thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.� Additional Biblical passages caution against divination, chanting, or using witches to contact the dead.

Are �witch doctors� considered witches? The term witch doctor, a practitioner meant to protect and heal others from ailments presumed to be caused by witches, first came into use in 1718. The term later came to be used to describe African shamans in the 1800s and is sometimes still used to describe those who use non-traditional medicine in healing. The type of healing can include spiritual, natural remedies, and other holistic approaches to the human body and mind.

The publication of Malleus Maleficarum, written in 1486, is credited with first spreading witch hysteria. Known as the Hammer of Witches, Malleus Maleficarum labeled witchcraft as heresy and served as a guide to identify, hunt, and interrogate witches. For more than one hundred years Malleus Maleficarum was the highest selling book in Europe other than the Bible. Perhaps the most well-known case of witch trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. More than 150 people were accused of witchcraft and eighteen were put to death. Numerous films and literature depict witch trials like the play The Crucible (1953) by Arthur Miller, the animated film ParaNorman (2012), and even the popular Disney film Hocus Pocus (1993).

What are some of the methods people used to �prove� someone was a witch? One method was called the �swimming test.� As suggested in the first season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018�present), a suspected witch was thrown into a body of water, tied to a rock, and left to sink or float. If the person floated, they were certainly a witch. If they sank and drowned, they were human. This was derived from the �trial by water,� an ancient practice where suspected criminals or sorcerers were thrown into rushing rivers to allow a higher power to decide their fate. This custom was banned in many European countries in the Middle Ages, only to reemerge in the seventeenth century as a witch trial that persisted in some locales well into the eighteenth century. Another variation of this test was the ducking stool. An accused witch would be strapped to a chair and ducked into a body of water as punishment or to prove she was a witch. Another test was to find the �witch�s mark.� As seen in The Scarlet Letter (1995) suspects were stripped and publicly examined for signs of a blemish that witches were thought to receive upon making their pact with Satan. It was believed that this �Devil�s Mark� could change shape and color, and was numb and insensitive to pain. It was easy for even the most minor physical imperfections, such as scars or birthmarks, to be labeled as signs of being a witch. By not being submissive enough, women were often accused of witchcraft. In the trial of Rachel Clinton, her accusers made the case against her with the following: �Did she not show the character of an embittered, meddlesome, demanding woman; perhaps in short, the character of a witch? Did she not scold, rail, threaten, and fight?� Even the way someone looked could doom them to being accused. Reverend John Gaule in the 1640s insisted that �every old woman with a wrinkled face, a furr�d brow, a hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue is not only suspected, but pronounced for a witch.�

Year of Release: 1976

Director: Brian De Palma

Writer: Lawrence D. Cohen

Starring: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie

Budget: $1.8 million

Box Office: $33.8 million

Carrie is a story of firsts. It is the first novel by Stephen King, published in 1974. It is the first of his works to be adapted to film, and it was the cinematic debut for actor John Travolta. The film itself begins with a first. Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) endures a typical, teenage rite of passage. While for many girls their first menstrual period is awkward and uncomfortable, for Carrie it is horrific. In what has become one of the most iconic horror introductions in the last fifty years, Carrie�s routine shower becomes a blood-soaked terror, not unlike that other famous shower scene. And her rising horror is only worsened by her fellow students� assault. Carrie is mocked and even pummeled with tampons. So how does this innocent, weak, seemingly powerless girl become a modern-day witch?

We first must ask; what are the powers that witches supposedly possess? Are there scientific explanations for them? Carrie comes to realize that with her transition into womanhood she has a new, uncommon trait: telekinesis, the ability to move things with one�s mind. Numerous movies and TV shows feature characters with this ability including Eleven on Stranger Things, Jean Grey of The X-Men (2000), and Roald Dahl�s beloved character Matilda (1988). Does telekinesis exist? The study of this supposed ability became popular in the late 1800s when objects would move as psychics and mediums contacted the dead. These occurrences proved to be hoaxes, but telekinesis gained attention again several decades later when a researcher at Duke University named J. B. Rhine tested the theory that people could change the outcome of rolling dice with their minds. The results of the experiments were enough to convince him and some others that telekinesis exists. Researchers since have been unable to duplicate his findings and therefore regard it as pseudoscience.

Another witch-related power that people are said to possess is the ability to �witch� water. Also called dowsing, the process begins with the diviner guiding a Y-shaped stick or two L-shaped ones. Water, minerals, and even gemstones are said to be found this way as the stick moves and points toward the target. This technique has been used by the military to try to locate weapons and tunnels during the Vietnam War and by regular citizens looking for a place to drill their well. The scientific community has attributed this technique to the ideomotor phenomenon. When this happens, the subject makes movements unconsciously. This phenomenon could also explain Ouija boards and other techniques used by mediums.

Year of Release: 1999

Directors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo S�nchez

Writers: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo S�nchez

Starring: Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, Joshua Leonard

Budget: $60,000

Box Office: $248.6 million

To fully understand the phenomenon surrounding The Blair Witch Project, one simply needs to glance at the film�s budget in comparison to the money it amassed. On the cusp of the twenty-first century, The Blair Witch Project exploded, sending droves of thrill-seekers to the theater. At the Internet�s infancy, the filmmakers capitalized on a unique strategy that paid off in millions. The marketing was done in such a way as to make people believe the footage, depicting three budding filmmakers in search of the Blair Witch in the remote Maryland woods, was real. �Found footage� movies hadn�t become popular yet and many people went into the theater expecting to watch the last harrowing days of three missing people. This was perhaps the first movie to use viral marketing through the Internet and other channels to reach a wide audience and get buzz going for a film. Missing persons posters were put on merchandise and even IMDB, the Internet movie database, listed the actors as �missing� and �presumed dead� for a time. A website for the film was created that looked to provide proof of the Blair Witch and the legends surrounding her. The unique (at that time) marketing and excellent word-of-mouth led The Blair Witch Project to become a tremendous box-office success.

We had the incredible opportunity to speak with Simon Barrett, the screenwriter of the 2016 movie Blair Witch, to find out more about his process of balancing creativity with science.

Year of Release: 2005

Director: Neil Marshall

Writer: Neil Marshall

Starring: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza

Budget: $3.5 million

Box Office: $57.1 million

There are particular fears which seem to be universal. The fear of the dark is one we nearly all have succumbed to, especially as children when our imaginations ran wild. The dark, utilized in horror films and stories for ages, is really the fear of the unknown. In the dark anything seems possible. Claustrophobia, the fear of tight and confining places, is also common. There is something about being walled in, with little air or space to move, that has compelled many people to take the stairs rather than risk a faulty elevator.

It is no wonder then that British filmmaker Neil Marshall explored both of these fears, and threw in some ugly and vicious creatures, to great effect in his horror film The Descent. The story of a group of female friends spelunking in the Appalachian Mountains starts like a complicated, character-driven drama, but quickly turns into unabashed horror when the cave collapses. If being trapped underground isn�t bad enough, the women of The Descent encounter beings beneath the earth. These albino creatures, who have adapted to their dark environment, begin to brutally kill the women. Sarah Carter (Shauna MacDonald) is the lone survivor. She eventually escapes through a hole in the cave, covered in blood and dirt from her horrific fight for survival. Interestingly, in the UK cut of the film, there is a bleaker ending. Sarah�s escape is a dream, and she never gets out of the cave, or away from the strange, subterranean creatures. This ending was considered too depressing for American audiences.

Caves and underground cave systems exist all over the world. An ancient city in Turkey called Derinkuyu that dates back to the eighth century BCE spans more than eight levels going as deep as 260 feet with more than six hundred entrances to the surface and is large enough to have held over twenty thousand people at one time. The temperature underground maintained a steady fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit and was ideal for living conditions year-round. The city was rediscovered in 1963 and researchers found kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms, food storage rooms, oil and wine presses, wells, weapons storage areas, churches, schools, tombs, and domestic animal stables.

Throughout the past two decades, underground systems have been found on several continents including South America, Africa, China, and in Europe. In Egypt, there are still unexplored caves and tunnels under the Giza Plateau, and in Wales a tunnel system was discovered that reaches fifteen miles in length. North America is the setting for The Descent and, like the movie, there are plenty of caves to explore in real life. (Hopefully without the creatures depicted in the movie!) The Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is the longest cave system in the world featuring over four hundred miles of surveyed passages. Evidence of human life in the cave dates back to the archaic period which runs from 8000 to 1000 BCE. Mammoth Cave serves as the setting for H. P. Lovecraft�s story The Beast in the Cave (1918) and is referenced in Herman Melville�s Moby Dick (1851).

What have people throughout history thought about creatures that live underground? There are stories and legends of creatures who live underground dating back centuries. Beings who dwell in mines or caves are known as knockers in many cultures. Some believe knockers cause cave-ins by knocking on the walls of a mine. Others think they knock to warn miners of impending danger. The legend of knockers began in England and Ireland and has been documented in fiction like Stephen King�s The Tommyknockers (1987).

The troll is another creature that is said to live underground. In Norse and Scandinavian folklore, trolls are referred to as man-eaters and turn to stone when coming in contact with sunlight. They were often written about as being strong, evil, and not cordial with humans. Stories are told of trolls who caused hurricanes and avalanches and are described as having deformed bodies, claws, and fangs.

Gnomes are said to be underground dwellers who can move as easily through solid earth as humans move through air. Gnomes appeared in stories and legends dating back to the 1500s and were thought to be the protectors of mines and treasures. Currently, gnomes are almost synonymous with gardens but originally were portrayed as reluctant to interact with or be near humans.

Were there ever people discovered to be living underground? Throughout history many religions have believed in a subterranean realm inside the Earth. In Hinduism the idea of Patala, or that which is below the feet, is described as having many levels of life below us ruled by nagas. Recently people have been discovered living in underground dwellings for a variety of reasons. In Bucharest, Romania, there are hundreds of people living in a tunnel system due to homelessness and closed orphanages.

The writer and director of The Descent explained that the creatures, referred to as crawlers, were human. �They�ve evolved in this environment over thousands of years. They�ve adapted perfectly to thrive in the cave. They�ve lost their eyesight, they have acute hearing and smell and function perfectly in the pitch black. They�re expert climbers, so they can go up any rock face and that is their world.�¹

Year of Release: 1990

Director: Ron Underwood

Writer: Brent Maddock, S. S. Wilson

Starring: Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward

Budget: $11 million

Box Office: $16.6 million

On its release in 1990, Tremors was not a hit. It premiered in fifth place, performing well below industry predictions. Yet, Tremors sparked a franchise that includes five sequels, one prequel, and a television series. This could best be explained by the original film�s humorous take on the genre, as well as its terrific reviews. Film critic James Berardinelli applauded Tremors; �horror-comedies often tread too far to one side or the other of that fine line; Tremors walks it like a tightrope.�¹

Set in the fictional town of Perfection, Nevada, Tremors is the story of two buddies, Val McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward), who have grown bored of their small, desert community. As they are headed out of town they happen upon several peculiar scenes, what we later come to understand are the effects of a subterranean worm wreaking havoc on the citizens of Perfection. Things soon develop into a classic creature feature when the worms, hungry for humans, reach the surface.

Science is at the forefront of Tremors thanks to the addition of Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter). Rhonda, a graduate student, happens to be studying seismology, the study of earthquakes, in the area. There are unusual findings in her equipment because of the huge worms� thunderous movements. The waves on her seismograph look similar to the undulating lines of an EKG machine, and by studying these, Rhonda can tell there is something beneath the desert floor.

The sandworms in Tremors are called graboids. Do sandworms exist? Sandworms permeate fiction and horror movies and are seen in many well-known franchises. The sandworms in Dune (1965) protect the coveted spice of melange in the fictional desert of Arrakis. They, like the graboids in Tremors, are big enough to swallow a vehicle whole. Sandworms in the movie Beetlejuice (1988) are large enough to ride and seem to prevent the dead from leaving their homes. In real life? Sandworms the size of those mentioned don�t exist (thankfully). Worms are defined by having long, tube-like bodies with no limbs. These include microscopic worms that we can�t see with the naked eye but also include a twenty-two-foot African earthworm and a 190-foot bootlace worm that lives in the sea.

Can creatures live underground like the graboids? We spoke to Allen Lipke, a former science teacher who worked at an underground lab to ask him what it�s like being half a mile underground.

Year of Release: 1941

Director: George Waggner

Writer: Curt Siodmak

Starring: Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains

Budget: $180,000

Box Office: $2.4 million

To our Rewinders, thanks for listening to the podcast!

Chapter Two: Child�s Play

1. �High Court Upholds New Trial in �Halloween II� Murder Case.� (1989) The LA Times.

2. �James Bulger Case: Timeline of Key Quotations.� (2010) The Daily Telegraph.