Rowan & Pine: A Feminist Folklore & Mythology Podcast - Episode Thirty-Nine： Zombies & Revenants- zombussy [with Ewan]

00:00:00.000 Just a quick note before we get started, this episode involves themes of slavery which is just

00:00:06.700 a content warning for anybody who may not be in the mood to listen to that and the other note is

00:00:12.460 our guest's microphone had some technical issues which results in some of the crackling, clicking,

00:00:19.820 popping that you might hear. I've done my best with it but I'm afraid this is as good as it can

00:00:24.940 get and it does get slightly better as the recording goes on so sorry about that we're all

00:00:30.180 learning hello and welcome to a special episode of rowan and pine where we have somebody who's

00:00:46.260 not emily it's our different different guest would you like to introduce yourself rowan and

00:00:51.340 Pine podcast. It's the best place in the world to listen to spooky things.

00:00:56.560 Hello, my name is Ewan. I'm Niamh's husband. I'm currently doing this with a broken arm.

00:01:02.420 And so if you hear any wincing or moaning during the podcast, this is me.

00:01:07.260 Please don't moan.

00:01:09.800 But it's about zombies.

00:01:11.640 It would be preferable if you didn't moan.

00:01:13.960 I'm not being paid or endorsed to do this in any way, shape or form.

00:01:17.320 So I will be linking my Patreon at the end of this for a GoFundMe to get me a robotic Terminator arm.

00:01:23.000 He's acting like he won't enjoy this immensely, getting to talk about zombies for the next hour or so.

00:01:31.360 So, yeah, that is the topic of today's episode.

00:01:35.420 We're doing zombies and revenants because it is October.

00:01:39.520 Every episode this month, you might have noticed so far, has something to do with death and mortality.

00:01:46.420 so what better than covering the undead there's something seriously wrong with your fan base

00:01:51.960 hey they're um they're varied okay spooky season you're acting like um you're not one of them

00:02:00.900 even though you don't listen to it you would definitely fall within the category i do listen

00:02:04.860 to your podcast when i've listened to many episodes and i've gotten i've promoted your

00:02:10.300 podcast tirelessly on his twitch follow you on on twitch by the way well now that emily is

00:02:16.180 otherwise occupied. We just couldn't figure out the timing to get our 40th episodes out. We try

00:02:24.060 and do 20 episodes a season, closing out season two. Scheduling wise, we could only get 19 this

00:02:28.920 season. So Ewan is very graciously, as you've heard, stepping in to help us out. I know you

00:02:34.660 have a problem with people who go off on tangents, so let's get into it. I am going to start with

00:02:39.640 The CDC from 2011 did a semi-serious zombie apocalypse guide and they went into it.

00:02:49.980 I'm glad that somebody got paid for this because that's the dream, just to get paid to pretend to prepare for a zombie apocalypse.

00:02:58.840 It's important to be prepared.

00:03:00.920 It is important.

00:03:02.040 You have a zombie apocalypse preparation at the back of your head.

00:03:06.660 I think everybody does when we can talk about that later.

00:03:09.640 But it's in that movie with Brad Pitt, oh, the zombie movie, what the hell is it called?

00:03:15.840 World War Z.

00:03:16.420 World War Z, thank you. 0.88

00:03:18.300 That the reason Israel was prepared for the zombie apocalypse was after the concentration camps. 0.75

00:03:24.540 They didn't think it would be ever possible for anybody to round people up and put them in ghettos.

00:03:29.080 So after that, they had like a quorum of 15 people. 0.85

00:03:33.720 and it was always like even if 15 people agreed it was one person's responsibility to 0.58

00:03:39.840 put in like a ridiculous counterpoint so no matter how ridiculous the suggestion was

00:03:45.560 um that they had to prepare for it so that's why they were prepared in the movie so it's always

00:03:50.860 good to be prepared for zombie apocalypses well that makes sense well the cdc were on their game

00:03:55.680 the actual web page is down it's completely archived now but just like a short quote from

00:04:01.600 it's if zombies did start roaming the streets cdc would conduct an investigation much like any

00:04:07.740 other disease outbreak cdc would provide technical assistance to cities states or international

00:04:12.740 partners dealing with zombie infestation this assistance might include consultation lab testing

00:04:19.500 and analysis patient management and care tracking of contacts and infection control they couldn't

00:04:25.640 even get people to believe in go but so good luck with zombie apocalypse i have a feeling that might

00:04:30.180 be why they took the web page down because yeah zombies aren't real yeah can't get people to wear

00:04:36.020 a mask you know we're not gonna get people to stop from biting their loved ones right yeah

00:04:40.660 so my first question to you is can you give a little rundown of your understanding of what

00:04:47.300 zombie traits are okay so you're gonna have to do a lot of fact checking and i'm gonna see you on you

00:04:53.300 and get you to look up things yes by the way ewan's main podcast experience as a listener is

00:05:00.200 theo vaughn so um don't knock theo vaughn he may have had donald trump on but he's funny

00:05:04.940 um yeah theo vaughn has a guy i don't know does that guy have a name um i i'm gonna say chris for

00:05:13.020 now okay so chris we don't have a chris uh we have a neve and neve does it all like every millennial

00:05:19.840 with a side hustle you don't have you don't get to outsource anything um so yeah if there's 0.65

00:05:24.920 anything that Ewan is just going off on a tangent about and he's just making shit up I'm going to

00:05:30.320 try and fact check as much as possible either either in the moment or in post so so we'll see

00:05:36.220 so the origins of zombies was not your question but I'll give you a brief origin of zombies so

00:05:44.340 in Ireland we don't have the bible we have the book of Kells and the first mention of zombies

00:05:48.680 is in 1916 0.99

00:05:50.320 when a Protestant

00:05:52.040 religious practitioner

00:05:54.680 forgot to put his toaster

00:05:56.700 in the cupboard.

00:05:59.040 Okay.

00:06:00.120 1916, Book of Kells

00:06:01.420 was the first red flag there.

00:06:03.940 Medieval manuscripts.

00:06:05.420 Okay.

00:06:07.580 Yeah.

00:06:08.640 Trinity College are probably

00:06:09.580 going to sue you for that one.

00:06:13.440 Now, so what was your question

00:06:14.800 about the different types of zombies?

00:06:16.100 No, no, no.

00:06:16.660 What are the...

00:06:17.480 What's your understanding?

00:06:18.460 what's the traits of a zombie how would you recognize a zombie in a movie or in real life

00:06:22.540 when this happens well if you like look up baltimore and search fentanyl that's the modern

00:06:29.060 zombie but um if you think of a zombie like everybody's first thing would be a shambling

00:06:35.640 shuffling corpse that is wanting people's brains or change if you like south park um but what people

00:06:43.780 usually would think of like right off the bat is just a reanimated corpse that eat your brains and

00:06:50.800 gain your knowledge yeah that's that's pretty much it okay podcast over no um a zombie according to

00:06:58.060 pop culture and folklore is usually either a reawakened corpse with a ravenous appetite or

00:07:03.820 someone bitten by another zombie infected with a zombie virus zombies are usually portrayed as

00:07:10.160 strong but robotic beings with rotting flesh their only mission is to feed. That's me for a week a

00:07:16.400 month. They typically don't have conversations although some may grunt a little. In the Haitian

00:07:22.500 voodoo tradition which we will get into much more later our listeners might remember a little

00:07:27.620 rundown from a whole year ago when we covered voodoo and voodoo and hoodoo in our Crossroads

00:07:34.320 episode but yeah they are different. Zombies in this tradition are said to be created by malevolent

00:07:40.560 priests or sorcerers who use them to carry out their commands. In fiction the methods of creating

00:07:45.980 zombies have evolved. Common explanations now include exposure to radiation or the spread of

00:07:52.180 a contagious virus. This has led to the popular notion of a zombie apocalypse where the infection

00:07:57.780 spreads uncontrollably and the zombification of the human population seems inevitable. Zombies

00:08:02.940 are often portrayed as multiplying by infecting others usually through biting who then transform

00:08:07.940 into zombies themselves. Side note most annoying trope in zombie pow culture is the person who

00:08:14.720 hides their bite. Yeah it's like um I've never seen a zombie movie in my life or heard of zombies I

00:08:20.380 have been bitten I better not tell anybody. Yeah I'm just gonna pretend this is isn't happening

00:08:25.000 until I completely turn and kill everybody that is helping to protect. Isn't that the whole plot 0.99

00:08:30.040 of the tv show supernatural it's like if they just talked to each other and told each other

00:08:35.020 what was going on the series wouldn't exist and the two of them spend like 23 hours a day together

00:08:40.060 and you're just like i can't do this again but yeah it's my pet peeve in tv shows when people

00:08:44.900 don't talk about like something ominous or what is it in dawn of the dead the remake when the

00:08:50.320 pregnant lady's bitten and they can see people turning from bites it's like no i'm not going to

00:08:55.020 tell anybody i'm just going to let her deliver the pregnant zombie or the pregnant zombie baby

00:08:59.480 the zombie baby god i hope it's not a pregnant zombie baby jesus that's a whole other set of 0.75

00:09:06.000 problems the idea that zombies impulse and drive comes from the brain has become a key concept in

00:09:10.960 their depiction because of this destroying the brain or severing its connection to the body is

00:09:15.540 thought to stop them since zombies are already dead

00:09:18.740 conventional methods of killing like gunshots poisoning or stabbing are ineffective unless the

00:09:28.760 brain is damaged in cases where zombies are controlled by magic they might be stopped by

00:09:33.380 the death of the sorcerer who created them i don't think i've ever seen magic zombies in any tv show

00:09:38.140 movie or comic or anything like that or a game actually yeah it's kind of like an untapped

00:09:43.500 thing i'm trying to think because usually if you're like you're george a romero night of the

00:09:50.740 dead slow shuffling brains zombies and then you have your although controversial some people say

00:09:57.360 they're not zombies but you have your like fast zombies that are like from world war z or from

00:10:02.480 28 days later the people who are infected with the rage virus which is essentially zombies

00:10:06.680 they're zombified i will put forward one example of a zombie controlled by magic in american horror

00:10:14.960 story coven there is voodoo priestess in it and she is controlling the dead with magic so that is

00:10:21.800 one that i can think of and i can only remember because i'm currently watching it zombies are

00:10:27.200 typically shown as as you said slow moving decaying figures though in some stories especially

00:10:32.160 those involving magic their bodies may be preserved in certain cases zombies even get

00:10:37.020 superhuman abilities such as enhanced strength or speed yeah the speed just like we don't need

00:10:42.300 to give them that on top of the biting and all that well it's better than that or it's better 1.00

00:10:46.000 than what was it eye zombie where she like eats people's brains to like solve the cases 1.00

00:10:50.240 she's a pathologist who like eats people's brains to see how they died or something stupid like 0.96

00:10:56.080 yeah it was such a good show though it's good fun it said that zombies are a great example of human 0.99

00:11:02.660 anxiety horror helps us face our fears they threaten our sense of belonging both in our

00:11:07.720 families and communities as well as in our own bodies the rise of zombies marks the end of human

00:11:13.480 control so it's like do you remember when i was saying to you like this is way off topic but um

00:11:19.040 right i have a fear of apes okay she does can confirm anytime she sees an ape including when

00:11:25.700 we've been to any zoo. I just it's like they have the strength and most of the intelligence of

00:11:33.140 humans but very little of the humanity and yeah I know like obviously they have their little

00:11:38.240 communities and all that kind of stuff but then you hear these stories of them like tearing people

00:11:42.640 apart and you're like yeah that is absolutely horrifying and zombies are horrifying for the

00:11:48.320 same reason so origins do you want to talk about origins origins origins orangutans origins can

00:11:56.220 we fact check that um so the actual word zombie comes from a haitian word that i'm going to a

00:12:02.580 butcher to attempt to pronounce but it's it's spelled m-v-u-m-b-i so i'm gonna say that's

00:12:09.940 pretty close that directly translates to devil but was eventually used by haitian slaves to describe

00:12:15.800 those of them who had been stripped of everything that made them human while being enslaved and

00:12:21.040 forced to work in cane fields which could only be described as inhumane conditions their word for

00:12:27.240 the living dead became synonymous with a broken slave there is however another version of the

00:12:32.840 haitian zombie a revolutionary slave these were people who refused to submit to the harshness of

00:12:37.640 slavery and resisted by various means one of which was to poison their masters the resistance movement 0.60

00:12:44.200 by these Haitian zombies led to the largest and most successful slave rebelling in history. 0.99

00:12:50.280 The Haitian Revolution, which led to Haiti becoming the first independent country founded 0.99

00:12:55.600 by former slaves. The revolution began in 1791 and lasted about 13 years. In this time,

00:13:02.780 the word zombie was first written about by a French writer who referred to a zombie as a

00:13:08.500 slave's belief in a returned soul in 1929 a world war one vet turned um new york times journalist

00:13:16.240 named william seabrook known for being an all-around scuzzy sensationalist with an interest

00:13:22.400 in occult too and a particular interest in haitian voodoo and um he introduced the concept of the

00:13:29.500 haitian zombie to kind of the mass uh populace he eventually published the magic island creating

00:13:36.580 the kind of trope that zombies are unintelligible uncivilized barbarians driven to drain the life

00:13:41.840 out of the living the book became a bestseller in the u.s and more or less birthed our modern

00:13:46.640 concept of a zombie so that was just before the release of the first feature film um white zombie

00:13:53.380 and then the first actual mention using the word zombie in a movie was um the 60s night of the dead

00:14:00.220 by george romero interesting thank you very much for that that all came from memory and i did not

00:14:05.400 read a single thing oh yeah definitely didn't read any of that yeah so my research was very

00:14:12.520 similar most people i think know at this stage that zombies do come from from haiti so yeah um

00:14:17.880 one of our best known accounts of folklore in haiti is by a writer called zora neil hurston

00:14:24.320 who also appeared back in our october 2023 halloween episode zora wrote extensively about

00:14:34.100 voodoo and hoodoo. Hurston described the zombie as a body without a soul.

00:14:39.860 She was actually, which I did not go into in that episode, she was a controversial figure. She was

00:14:45.640 the leading black woman novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, but she opposed the Supreme Court

00:14:50.800 decision in Brownby Board of Education and she defended segregated schools. So that's just a

00:14:56.080 flavour of the multitudes that she contained. So she had a book called Tell My Horse, which was a

00:15:02.400 first-hand account of the weird mysteries and horrors of voodoo and writing specifically about

00:15:07.980 zombies she said no one can stay in haiti without hearing zombies mentioned in one way or another

00:15:14.200 and the fear of this thing and all that it means seeps over the country like a ground current of

00:15:19.500 cold air sit in the marketplace and pass a day with the market woman and notice how often some

00:15:24.520 vendus cries out that the zombie with its invisible hand has filtered her money or her goods or the

00:15:31.060 accusation is made that a zombie has been set upon her or someone in her family to work a piece of

00:15:37.280 evil so like the domestic Irish leprechaun we don't know that they're real but they could be

00:15:41.640 yeah you can't prove it's not real when you start like saying they're not real that's when they get

00:15:49.180 you yep and they just be waiting for you in Haitian tradition zombies are dead individuals 0.88

00:15:56.720 brought back to life through necromancy by a bokor who is a sorcerer or a witch. The bokor's powers 0.99

00:16:02.600 are opposed by the hoongan which is a male priest that's h-o-u-n-g-a-n and mambo that's a female 0.99

00:16:10.300 priestess of formal voodoo. Once revived zombie remains under the bokor's control acting as a 0.83

00:16:16.440 personal slave without any free will. This process has two key parts. First a zombie astral is made 0.99

00:16:22.200 by removing part of a person's soul this piece of the soul can then be used for other magical

00:16:26.940 purposes including bringing a person's corpse back to life known as zombie core cadaver that's

00:16:32.740 french a book or can capture a zombie astral to boost their spiritual abilities or they may also

00:16:37.380 seedless astral zombie i keep wanting to say astral zombie i keep hearing astral zombies

00:16:43.000 like every time you say voodoo hoodoo i just keep thinking um the power of the voodoo hoodoo

00:16:49.100 You do remind me of the babe, David Bowie. 0.96

00:16:52.160 We're going to have to listen to Astro Zombies after this.

00:16:54.540 And Labyrinth.

00:16:55.420 And watch Labyrinth, yeah. 0.98

00:16:56.520 A boker can capture a zombie astral to boost their spiritual abilities, 0.94

00:17:00.980 or they may also seal this astral zombie in a specially decorated bottle 0.83

00:17:04.740 and sell it to clients for luck, healing, or success in business.

00:17:08.520 It's believed that ultimately, God will reclaim the zombie's soul,

00:17:11.880 making it a temporary spiritual being. 0.93

00:17:13.840 So these two types of zombies in the voodoo tradition, 0.86

00:17:18.000 They reflect the belief in soul dualism found in both the Bakongo religion and Haitian voodoo. 0.58

00:17:23.960 So as we sort of alluded to before, there is voodoo, voodoo and hoodoo, which are three, I don't want to say three branches on the same tree, but they led into one another.

00:17:35.220 And these are all like kind of different religious beliefs in Africa. 0.70

00:17:40.580 And then when they gathered up slaves from various areas throughout Africa and threw them all in the same kind of plantations, that's what happens with cultures.

00:17:50.480 They mix together in a melting pot and this is what you get.

00:17:53.900 Niamh, the editing gremlin here.

00:17:55.660 Just wanted to jump in and give a further explanation for anybody who has not listened to our Crossroads episode from last year.

00:18:03.380 voodoo and voodoo are connected in that they share their roots from african belief systems

00:18:10.700 it's generally accepted that voodoo is louisiana voodoo is haiti and hoodoo is a folk magic and

00:18:20.060 draws elements of protestantism so you've got that christian element in there as well

00:18:24.820 so yes three separate things just wanted to slot this in because we moved on a little bit quickly

00:18:32.080 there yes thank you each type of zombie is considered to be missing one half of its soul

00:18:37.140 either the physical body or the spirit so you were talking earlier about themes of slavery

00:18:42.820 there is actually an account in Hurston's book a person that she referred to as A and the passage

00:18:50.500 reads A was awakened because somebody required his body as a beast of burden in his natural state he

00:18:56.600 could never have been hired to work with his hands so he was made into a zombie because they wanted

00:19:00.820 his services as a laborer b was summoned that's another person to labor but also he is reduced to

00:19:06.800 the level of a beast as an act of revenge c was the culmination of a bamun ceremony and pledge

00:19:12.720 that is he was given as a sacrifice to pay off a debt to spirit for benefits received

00:19:17.540 i asked how the victims were chosen and many told me that any corpse not too old to work would do

00:19:23.640 so that's just essentially the removing the need to actually take care of the person

00:19:30.440 you know if they're creating slaves or enslaved people i suppose is the correct term that we

00:19:36.420 should be using here you're going to use them fresh corpses yes very important yes and they're

00:19:41.440 i mean there's so much racial undertones here but choosing the strongest the best laborers the best 0.99

00:19:49.080 craftsmen and all of that but you know what's the inconvenient part of bringing a human to your

00:19:55.500 property to work you have to feed them and clothe them and take care of them medically and all of

00:20:02.080 that so you know if they even did that much for them so like the zombie is achieving all of that

00:20:07.840 without actually having to do any of the work that's involved with them being actually alive

00:20:13.040 and human so you talked about the Haitian slave rebellion one of the first lessons learned by

00:20:20.620 Haitian slaves who were completely dependent on their masters was how to use poison for suicide

00:20:25.940 In Haitian belief, dying meant returning to land Guinea or Africa and gaining freedom.

00:20:32.760 This act was also seen as a way to take back one's own life from the master,

00:20:36.480 making suicide a form of defiance, which is incredibly depressing.

00:20:41.120 After the successful slave revolution in 1804, which freed Haiti from the French Empire,

00:20:46.080 the fear of being re-enslaved still lingered.

00:20:48.880 Some leaders nearly reinstated slavery for economic reasons,

00:20:52.480 as the world had few alternatives to a slave-based economy.

00:20:56.240 This led to a persistent fear of becoming a zombie which symbolised re-enslavement.

00:21:00.780 Nobody wanted to be dead and powerless working for a master.

00:21:04.360 According to legend, the only way for a zombie to escape was by consuming salt.

00:21:08.700 A zombie's master would ensure their food was bland to prevent this.

00:21:11.780 If a zombie tasted salt, they would regain their consciousness and return to life and freedom.

00:21:16.980 For many Haitians, having flavourful food became associated with the idea of freedom.

00:21:22.480 So it's just really interesting that, like, flavorful food is, like, that little act of, like, symbolism of, like... 1.00

00:21:29.880 Fuck you white people and your bland food. 1.00

00:21:32.480 Exactly. It's the ultimate. It's why they make so much fun of us for having bland food all the time. 1.00

00:21:38.240 It's like, you never had to worry about becoming zombies.

00:21:41.780 It's like when I lived in Canada and I went to get a burrito and the guy was from South America. 0.97

00:21:46.980 And I ordered for, like, the spiciest hot sauce in the burrito and he looked at me and he was like, 0.95

00:21:51.260 are you sure you're very white yeah white boy spicy is definitely a thing there 0.92

00:21:57.500 though it's rare there are several credible and i'm putting credible in quotes here

00:22:02.500 reports in medical journals of people using compounds to induce paralysis in people and

00:22:08.880 then revive them from the grave a 1997 article in the british medical journal the lancet described

00:22:15.660 three verifiable accounts of zombies in one case a haitian woman who appeared to be dead

00:22:20.360 was buried in a family tomb only to reappear three years later what kind of state was she in

00:22:26.820 she wouldn't be well she wouldn't be well she'd need a wash she would need her hair done yeah

00:22:32.820 an investigation revealed that her tomb was filled with stones and her parents agreed to 0.83

00:22:37.720 admit her to a local hospital i fucking hope they did in another well-documented case a 0.88

00:22:43.760 Haitian man named Clairvius Narcisse. What an amazing name. Clairvius Narcisse entered a local 0.97

00:22:49.860 hospital with severe respiratory problems in 1962. After he slipped into a coma, Narcisse was declared

00:22:56.260 dead and buried shortly thereafter. But 18 years later, a man walked up to Angelina Narcisse in a

00:23:03.080 village marketplace, insisting she was his sister. Doctors, townspeople and family members all

00:23:08.780 identified him as clervius narcisse who claimed that he had been buried alive then dug up and put

00:23:14.320 to work on a distant sugar plantation he didn't even get a nice second chance at life he just

00:23:20.480 dug up and put to work on a plantation seems like an awful lot of effort as well yeah you can

00:23:26.640 to poison somebody to get them as a slave like i don't and was slavery still around in the 60s

00:23:31.640 um that was bang in the middle of the civil rights movement so there was not slavery but

00:23:38.560 there would have been like segregation and stuff like that i will double fact check that for the

00:23:42.460 year but yeah and then probably i remember this but do you remember the whole bath salts thing in

00:23:47.620 2012 yes i was a bath salt advocate you're a bath salt dealer yeah um well there was a man called

00:23:56.720 rudy eugene who was shot dead by police while biting off parts of another man's face oh yeah

00:24:03.180 you hear lots of things like that you know um then there's that zombie drug that people are on now

00:24:08.900 um in south america that there was a vice documentary on um they give it to people

00:24:14.540 um to comply with them to be so like a thief will come up to you and they'll like

00:24:19.060 prick you with a needle or you know get it into your blood system or spike your drink and you

00:24:23.360 basically become subservient and compliant and they bring you up to an atm and um literally

00:24:29.260 get you to give them all your money and then they do all sorts of like sometimes they get their 0.63

00:24:32.620 organs stolen and stuff like that jesus so eugene was dubbed the miami zombie he reportedly growled

00:24:39.720 at police when they pleaded with him to stop i'm laughing but it's not funny um there's a theory

00:24:44.680 that eugene may have been high on bath salts a synthetic drug known to cause violent behavior

00:24:49.440 and hallucinations police pointed out similarities to other cases where individuals became violent

00:24:54.420 disrobed and displayed superhuman strength bath salts were at the time a relatively new drug

00:25:00.660 and were banned by the DEA in 2011.

00:25:05.180 They contain chemicals that produce a stimulant high

00:25:08.020 similar to meth or cocaine.

00:25:10.120 Users report severe agitation, paranoia, and loss of control.

00:25:14.360 Just to go back to it, because I fact-checked myself.

00:25:16.880 See, I'm getting very good at this.

00:25:17.880 Very good.

00:25:18.320 It's called Devil's Breath, and it's also called scopolamine.

00:25:23.160 S-C-O-P-O-L-A-M-I-N-E.

00:25:26.140 And it also has a street name of Burundanga.

00:25:29.860 Burundanga?

00:25:30.260 yeah it's a cool name but devil's breath is definitely cooler and it's derived from 0.67

00:25:33.500 nightshade plants and basically they use it on people to turn them into it's like super

00:25:39.620 rohypnol or rufies rufies rufies not rupees rupees are in zelda and india i was gonna say

00:25:47.500 rupees are like indian currency but zelda i played zelda before i knew about india leave me alone

00:25:52.160 okay zelda predates india right eugene's girlfriend in an interview with the miami

00:25:57.740 harold said he was a kind person and didn't use hard drugs she believes he was either unknowingly

00:26:03.120 drugged or cursed by voodoo which she hadn't believed in until this incident or he was just

00:26:08.220 having the time of his life and lying yeah but i don't know time of your life biting people's face 0.76

00:26:13.180 off they don't seem to go together for me i'm sure people in america who are like the walking

00:26:17.420 dead now on fentanyl didn't look at it be like hey i want to be like a zombie they just want to

00:26:22.240 it high so my next question for you is how would you categorize zombies in pop culture you've kind

00:26:31.120 of talked about it but so you have your george a romero super slow like zombies that you see

00:26:37.640 people running around with shovels you know hitting them and you can like get out of the 0.99

00:26:40.460 way and board yourself in the house and be reasonably okay because they're slow as shit 0.99

00:26:43.740 and usually trip people are tripping over things for no reason when they're running away from them 0.94

00:26:48.460 then you have your dawn of the dead remake where they're running zombies which are far scarier 0.99

00:26:53.920 because fuck that it wants it wants to eat you and you need cardio to survive 0.98

00:26:58.720 not about that life it's funny because george romero went from being like a pioneer of zombie 1.00

00:27:04.800 movies and night of the living dead where everybody loved it and then dawn of the dead

00:27:08.240 which everybody loved it now he went too far and landed the dead because he started like

00:27:11.820 making them talk and like having little bits of their humanity and it was just terrible

00:27:16.820 because they communicated with each other and formed a little zombie union like that yeah that 0.99

00:27:22.920 was really stupid when it was like i remember you saying you were like once that zombie started 0.96

00:27:27.020 talking i was done there are like it seems to be mostly like in tv where there's talking zombies 0.99

00:27:32.300 i don't know did walking dead every you finished walking dead didn't you no i didn't everybody got

00:27:36.480 bored of walking dead nobody's finished the walking dead it's a myth that the walking dead

00:27:41.700 doesn't end and some say that they're still talking about stuff and things stuff laura we

00:27:46.620 need to talk about stuff and things and somehow through all of this there seems to be zombies

00:27:51.080 outside but human drama's far more interesting but i'm just wondering did it ever get to the

00:27:55.020 point of talking zombies god i hope not and then the other thing i was going to say in tv you do

00:28:01.980 have your talking zombies because there is i zombie where there was talking zombies the show

00:28:06.660 that i will never get over the fact that it didn't get a second season which was bbc's in the flesh

00:28:11.300 which was great and I never hear anybody talking about it anymore but the whole plot of that show

00:28:16.800 was there was a zombie outbreak and they discovered a cure which gave people back

00:28:22.900 their consciousness and their humanity and then they had to basically go back into zombie

00:28:30.440 rehabilitation and release program where they had to attend counseling and deal with the crimes that

00:28:36.900 they committed while they were under the influence of zombiness and um yeah it was just a very 0.67

00:28:43.460 sweet it was set in like a small town in england it was quite sweet and it was quite like

00:28:48.920 like don't get me wrong there were like some dark parts of it um but yeah it was just really cool

00:28:53.600 and it was really different from what i could say there was nothing else that was going and it was

00:28:57.600 right around the time that there was a bit of a zombie revival like 2015 2016 but um yeah r.i.p

00:29:04.860 in the flesh pun intended so yeah you have your basically you're running zombies walking zombies

00:29:11.660 you're talking zombies you're 28 days later zombies not zombies where they're infected with 0.99

00:29:17.680 the rage virus but they're the scariest zombies of all in my opinion with the fucked up eyes and 0.98

00:29:21.340 the fact that they run and the noise they make too yeah yeah and then you have no i guess the 0.95

00:29:29.100 infected in like the last of us tv show and um game as well it's kind of similar in that people

00:29:36.880 can be almost amplified even though they're infected with cordyceps which is a fungal

00:29:42.180 infection it sounds like like a yeast infection well like when we talked earlier about the

00:29:51.160 the attributes of a zombie and what like makes a zombie i mean i would argue apart from the

00:29:56.820 is there there's shamblers in um the last of us right there's slow zombies and is there fast

00:30:03.600 zombies too i can't remember this is what happens when you put like four years in between seasons

00:30:08.060 i forget what happened well it's like most most like games now like very few of them have like

00:30:14.620 running zombies it's all like resident evil style slow shuffling zombies because

00:30:20.460 that's what's scary is like a horde of things moving at you very very slowly

00:30:24.520 what was that game that you showed me the part of it where there was nazi zombies

00:30:30.540 remember there was like this one was it like extra gameplay or something oh yeah you're thinking of

00:30:36.720 call of duty zombies which is probably more popular than call of duty now it was like game

00:30:41.120 mode call of duty is like for those that don't know is a multiplayer shooting game where you

00:30:45.520 basically run around just killing other humans but then they added in like a fun little co-op

00:30:50.000 game mode where like you and three of your friends run around and like board up places and kill wave

00:30:55.780 after wave of endless zombies yeah were they shufflers um at the start yeah but as the rounds

00:31:03.020 go on it gets harder and i believe they run it's been a long time since i played zombies

00:31:06.800 and just back to my earlier question are there like slow zombies in the last of us

00:31:12.140 i'm trying to even remember they're not really zombies in the last of us they're just kind of

00:31:17.500 i suppose you could kind of think of but they're not zombies in the sense of i suppose they they

00:31:26.220 do bite people in turn make them infected and they do shamble after people and yeah well like

00:31:33.420 i would look at it this way if you're in the mood to watch something with zombies

00:31:37.060 your craving would be satiated if you watch the last of us because it's got all the

00:31:41.020 pretty much elements of zombies right if a zombie apocalypse happened tomorrow if we woke up

00:31:47.620 and saw in the news that a zombie apocalypse had hit where are you going where am i going

00:31:52.720 yeah where are you going um to the remotest area i can think of we should be okay like because we

00:31:59.580 live in the northwest of ireland and it's pretty fucking remote yeah nobody lives here they

00:32:03.580 actually somebody on reddit put up a like a map a population map of ireland and it was showing like 0.57

00:32:10.940 that like was it like 50 of the population of ireland lives on the east coast yeah i believe

00:32:19.140 that oh the east coast around they're fucked yeah on the island because they've got belfast

00:32:22.800 they've got dublin you know um it was oh just to go back to um world war z again it was a cool idea 0.54

00:32:29.380 and that which was something different is they mentioned how north korea dealt with it so like

00:32:34.180 when the whole world has fallen to the zombie apocalypse that north korea in the space of 48

00:32:39.960 hours um took out the teeth of every single person and it stopped the infection spreading

00:32:46.100 because if they couldn't bite there was no infection spreading i'd like to see anybody

00:32:51.500 try and actually implement that don't just go around pulling like everybody's teeth once again

00:32:55.980 they couldn't get us to all to wear masks so yeah um if they can't get people to like allow 5g 0.70

00:33:02.620 they're not gonna let you take your teeth out and just as a side note we do not endorse north korea 0.86

00:33:09.040 just in case everyone's like they sound like they like it or 5G or 5G so yeah that is sort of our 0.75

00:33:17.180 pop culture rundown of zombies I knew you would be the right person to have on for that I know I

00:33:22.560 totally regret though picking zombies as a topic because it's more about slavery and that kind of

00:33:27.900 darkness as it is to I to be honest with you like my only experience and knowledge before research

00:33:33.820 and anything to do with zombies was from from computer games and from movies so then when I

00:33:38.880 actually looked into it and saw that it came from like slavery and all that I was like oh that's a

00:33:43.940 bit grim well like unfortunately that is a huge part of folklore and Emily and I do find a lot

00:33:52.780 like we'll start researching into something and like say for example we had our episode on mermaids

00:33:58.700 and we realized that a lot of mermaid legends are allegories for women giving up their youth

00:34:07.140 and their beauty and it being stolen from them because in a lot of mermaid legends

00:34:12.460 he takes her tail or he takes her comb or something and it forces her to stay on land

00:34:19.460 so it takes her comb yeah so mermaids have a comb that'll come through their hair and

00:34:23.620 it's sort of like a symbol of her beauty so it's like stealing her comb is almost like

00:34:28.420 stealing a woman's beauty away from her so she's no clothes and she's half fish but she's a comb

00:34:32.600 yes yes um i didn't make it up like it's not i have a good pop culture question for you right 0.97

00:34:39.860 you know how white women love murder documentaries and love serial killers and 1.00

00:34:46.300 definitely white women like a small percentage of white women have um are are attracted to 0.99

00:34:53.300 serial killers and will like write them love letters and try and marry them in prison and 1.00

00:34:56.260 whatnot right if the zombie apocalypse happens is it going to be like pin-up poster boy zombies

00:35:01.400 that the white women love for example if like uh i don't know if like chris hemsworth was a zombie

00:35:06.860 they're still going to be like well he could be a zombie but you know it's still chris hemsworth

00:35:13.600 see i think that's something that like in the flesh probably could have explored

00:35:16.900 and also wasn't like nicholas holt when he was like top tier heartthrob he was like a zombie

00:35:24.040 in that film because he looks like a sickly victorian child yeah well he did then he doesn't

00:35:28.740 know um and i'm pretty sure like people were like thirsting over him even though he was like

00:35:33.500 very pale and i mean people loved edward cullen he's dead and that's true women did like edward 0.96

00:35:38.980 cullen so there probably would be a small minority of women looking for a zambussy

00:35:44.160 zambussy jesus christ okay that's the title of the episode that could be the title

00:35:49.460 zambussy um i think women love a tortured hero they love a man with hidden depth like the crow

00:36:01.760 brandon lee yes because it hints at sensitivity and it hints at like a man who has basically

00:36:09.000 been through it and he's able to relate emotionally probably is a little bit more in touch with his

00:36:14.300 feelings well like i know just from the terrible terrible things that you read

00:36:18.000 that expose me on my own podcast that there's definitely going to be if i looked up like

00:36:23.700 zombie erotic novels i know without even looking up that there is definitely oh there definitely

00:36:29.560 is look one up let's see what what kind of titles we have there there's novels about what was that

00:36:33.900 one that you told me the name of that you allegedly didn't read i did not read it it was like milk and

00:36:38.000 it wasn't it's called something farm but you keep calling it milking the minotaur

00:36:41.680 every time he comes in when i'm reading something he's like you're reading milk in the minotaur 0.98

00:36:46.760 like i fucking i'm not zombie erotic fiction the erotic zombie yep there is there's so there's 0.97

00:36:53.920 on um goodreads there is 30 zombie erotica books flesh skin reunion fables of the reconstruction 0.98

00:37:04.920 read out the best blurb that you can see you're the funniest reawakening lesbian zombies from

00:37:10.480 outer space wasn't that a movie probably love lust and zombies i know i'm thinking of lesbian 0.98

00:37:17.060 vampire killing flesh bang he loves me for my brains jesus still hungry for love that's great 0.89

00:37:25.060 that is good okay i'm gonna go into still hungry for love hungry for love gives a delicious new 0.68

00:37:30.500 spin on Undying Love. Each

00:37:32.380 new story is a slice of wicked zombie

00:37:34.580 fun by Jonathan Mabry

00:37:36.540 from New York Times said that.

00:37:39.340 Wonderfully twisted under

00:37:40.580 care. This doesn't give you the fucking blurb 0.99

00:37:42.580 though. Should be Skrulldine 0.99

00:37:44.460 and should. No, it doesn't.

00:37:47.300 Yeah, there's like

00:37:48.160 188 zombie romance books.

00:37:50.660 A romance story involving zombies.

00:37:52.600 Preferably either the heroine or hero

00:37:54.360 is a zombie. Also accepted

00:37:56.360 are romances set during zombie attacks.

00:37:58.880 That's the last thing you'd want.

00:38:00.500 during a zombie attack

00:38:01.460 is the right

00:38:01.900 well see that

00:38:02.260 that was also a big problem

00:38:03.680 with The Walking Dead

00:38:04.540 it was like

00:38:05.080 how is your one getting pregnant 0.60

00:38:06.400 they haven't washed 0.85

00:38:07.740 in six months 1.00

00:38:08.500 and all of the women 1.00

00:38:10.000 have perfect eyebrows 1.00

00:38:10.900 and no underarm hair

00:38:11.840 of course

00:38:12.200 yeah so while I don't

00:38:13.760 judge people for

00:38:14.760 reading zombie erotic fiction

00:38:17.100 don't be at it

00:38:18.140 you've better things

00:38:19.220 you could be looking up

00:38:20.020 as the fanfic people say

00:38:21.880 you don't yuck

00:38:22.760 somebody's yum 1.00

00:38:23.420 dirty bastard 1.00

00:38:26.860 my kink is not your kink 1.00

00:38:28.060 or your kink is not my kink 0.72

00:38:29.380 I can't remember

00:38:29.820 which way it's supposed to go so yes um we can get into then some other zombie myths or zombie

00:38:38.400 adjacent myths from other parts of the world so probably the closest we have in celtic mythology

00:38:45.080 is um from welsh celtic mythology it's the tale of branwen and the magic cauldron side note anybody

00:38:52.420 who's read a court of thorns and roses will recognize the story where sarah j mass got the

00:38:56.900 idea for the cauldron in that which turns people into fae. So long ago in ancient lands of Britain

00:39:05.060 there lived Branwyn daughter of Clare a woman of great beauty and wisdom. Her brother Bran the

00:39:12.160 Blessed was a giant and king of the Britons known for his might and kindness. One day Mathalwick

00:39:18.540 king of Ireland journeyed across the sea to seek Branwyn's hand in marriage. He wished to unite

00:39:23.720 their kingdom in peace and harmony through this bond. Bran agreed to the match and all seemed

00:39:28.660 well, but Branwen had another brother, Ifnisian, whose heart was filled with unrest. Perhaps it

00:39:34.900 was because he had been left out of the marriage arrangements, perhaps it was because he hated the

00:39:38.860 Irish, or perhaps it was the ancient urge to control his sister's fate. Whatever the reasons,

00:39:45.140 Ifnisian seethed with anger. In a fit of fury, he sneaked into the stables and cruelly mutilated 0.98

00:39:51.140 the horses of the Irish king. The wedding celebrations nearly collapsed into chaos.

00:39:56.980 Enraged, King Mytholic demanded retribution for this insult, but Bran, wise and gentle,

00:40:02.400 soothed the anger with gifts. It's a great way to soothe anger. Among these offerings was a

00:40:07.200 magical cauldron, the cauldron of rebirth, which could return the dead to life. A corpse placed

00:40:13.240 inside would rise again to fight, but without the gift of speech or thought, no more than a silent,

00:40:18.460 soulless soldier. Peace was restored and Branwyn sailed to Ireland to become queen but the peace

00:40:24.800 was short-lived. In time Matholick and his people turned against Branwyn mistreating her cruelly.

00:40:31.880 Her heart heavy with sorrow she sent word to her brother Bran calling for aid. When Bran heard of

00:40:37.800 her suffering he gathered his forces and sailed to war. The Irish however had a fearsome advantage. 0.97

00:40:44.740 With the Cauldron of Rebirth, they revived their fallen warriors,

00:40:48.440 who rose again to fight, though stripped of their voices and souls.

00:40:52.640 These reanimated corpses, bound to battle, fought on without rest like the walking dead. 0.91

00:40:58.620 Ifnisian, haunted by guilt for causing the strife, devised a desperate plan. 0.95

00:41:04.100 He slipped into the battlefield and, pretending to be dead, 0.97

00:41:07.340 allowed himself to be cast into the cauldron.

00:41:09.940 Once inside, with all his strength, he shattered the cauldron from within. 0.58

00:41:13.940 But the effort was so great that his heart burst, and Ifnissian perished for real.

00:41:19.780 With the cauldron destroyed, the tide of war turned, yet the cost was high,

00:41:23.960 for many brave souls had been lost on both sides,

00:41:26.460 and Branwen's heart was shattered by the suffering that had befallen her people.

00:41:30.920 Thus ends the tale of Branwen, the cauldron of rebirth,

00:41:34.000 and the brother who, in the end, sought redemption through sacrifice.

00:41:38.340 Some say that this cauldron is a symbol of both birth and death,

00:41:41.840 may have inspired later tales of magical vessels such as the holy grail

00:41:46.220 but in this legend it was a source of dread

00:41:48.720 bringing only hollow life and endless war to those it touched

00:41:51.800 have you ever heard that story before i have not

00:41:55.840 and they revive but it's cool you never normally see irish people as the villains in anything

00:42:00.900 no we're normally busy doing nothing yeah or being oppressed

00:42:04.840 and now we're just gonna have a quick word from our sponsor

00:42:08.640 milking a minotaur

00:42:10.660 we are not sponsored by the book milking a minotaur but it's a real thing

00:42:16.820 and the name is fascinating and i suggest you read the blurb on amazon because it is funny as 0.98

00:42:22.080 fuck do you want to read that no i don't want to spoil it for them they like to read their porn 0.97

00:42:27.280 they don't need to hear my wonderful soothing asmr telling them about the minotaur or zon bussy 0.99

00:42:33.440 great thank you for that actually can we get a poll on your instagram if i should start doing

00:42:37.220 ASMR with my soft

00:42:38.700 soothing voice

00:42:39.300 we can do a poll

00:42:40.140 yes

00:42:40.460 nobody will vote now

00:42:41.280 because people don't vote

00:42:41.920 in my Instagram polls

00:42:42.780 so I want to hear a poll

00:42:44.400 I need some

00:42:44.960 I need something good

00:42:46.080 going on in my life

00:42:46.840 with my broken arm

00:42:47.560 which actually is broken

00:42:48.580 it's not an exaggeration

00:42:49.680 I'm getting surgery on Monday

00:42:50.880 you can't play guitar

00:42:51.600 or games properly

00:42:52.660 this is why I'm doing

00:42:53.860 this podcast

00:42:54.420 because I can't game

00:42:55.520 I can't play guitar

00:42:56.720 because I fell

00:42:57.700 bringing out the garbage

00:42:58.980 or bins as we call it here

00:43:00.480 wearing Crocs

00:43:01.500 but to be fair

00:43:02.500 if I was wearing

00:43:03.540 normal shoes

00:43:04.140 I still would have fallen

00:43:04.960 because it's slippy 0.99

00:43:05.840 as a motherfucker outside 0.99

00:43:07.700 So I'll go in according to plan. 0.99

00:43:10.420 I'm getting surgery on Monday and I should be okay.

00:43:12.340 I'll not go in according to plan. 0.52

00:43:13.600 I'm going to come back as a zombie.

00:43:14.740 And this is why we're doing this, to prepare me for it. 0.83

00:43:17.600 Zombussy. 0.99

00:43:20.860 It's your new favorite word. 0.97

00:43:24.320 In Hindu mythology, we have the Vitala.

00:43:28.260 Vitala are spirits that haunt charnel grounds and possess the bodies of the dead.

00:43:33.440 In their mortal vehicles, these spirits harass the living,

00:43:35.940 driving people mad, killing children and causing miscarriages. Because they live in the realm

00:43:41.400 between life and death, Vitalas can see the past, present and future and for this reason 0.82

00:43:46.460 magicians try to enslave them. However, they also guard villages and have a deep understanding of

00:43:52.000 human nature. They can be dispatched by reciting holy mantra and performing funeral rites of the

00:43:57.980 dead. According to legend, King Vikramaditya was asked to capture a Vitala that lived in the tree

00:44:04.440 that stood near the kingdom's cremation grounds

00:44:06.660 to succeed

00:44:08.520 the king had to remain silent

00:44:10.020 but every time, this would be you

00:44:11.880 every time he captured the Batala

00:44:13.800 the creature told the king a magical story

00:44:15.900 ending in a question

00:44:16.840 no matter how hard the king

00:44:20.080 tried to keep quiet, he was compelled

00:44:21.820 to answer the question 0.98

00:44:22.840 and when the king spoke, the Batala escaped 0.91

00:44:25.640 and returned to his tree 0.83

00:44:26.820 Zebadi, get down from that tree

00:44:30.120 that's a Tommy Ternan reference

00:44:32.440 by the way

00:44:32.860 yeah like such a such an easy way to be thwarted like you just ask somebody a question and they're

00:44:38.540 so polite they have to answer you somebody i knew when i was younger used to say actually

00:44:44.080 like he meant really like oh cool but he said like actually and you'd kind of stop and wait

00:44:50.420 for him to say something but he was just saying oh cool it would work man he'd get he'd get away 0.87

00:44:55.480 from that came back into his fucking tree and now we are moving in to the portion of the podcast 0.99

00:45:01.060 which is away from zombies and into revenants. 0.99

00:45:08.680 So there's a blurring of the lines sort of between zombies and revenants.

00:45:13.800 For definition, a revenant is a spirit or animated corpse

00:45:17.940 that is believed to have been revived from death to haunt the living.

00:45:21.660 The word revenant is derived from the old French word revenant,

00:45:25.320 which means returning, and it's related to the French verb revenir,

00:45:29.020 which means to come back.

00:45:30.220 revenants are not mindless and they do have sentience it was said that when a wicked person

00:45:35.640 died their restless spirits were sometimes able to reanimate their corpse from beyond the grave

00:45:40.820 in order to carry out their malevolent intent basically if you've watched the movie the revenant

00:45:46.180 with leonardo dicaprio you know what a revenant is literally the only thing i remember that movie

00:45:51.040 is the bear homeboy fucked bear but yeah no the whole thing about that is um the trappers that

00:45:58.840 he's with um when they're getting skins and pelts and then they get attacked by a faction of native 0.98

00:46:06.260 americans and the group of trappers he's with one of them like kills his son and leaves him for dead

00:46:11.620 uh they bury him in the ground and then he comes back and wreaks havoc yes so he reveneers he comes

00:46:18.580 back we can go back to ancient greece for our first sort of mentions of revenants they were

00:46:24.600 very much a society that embraced the supernatural ancient greek writings revealed that many believed

00:46:29.880 that the dead could walk the earth they imagined scenarios where reanimated corpses left their

00:46:34.480 graves to haunt the streets and seek revenge on the living for wrongs done to them that's like

00:46:39.540 taking holding a grudge to a whole other level you know me like i forget when people wrong me

00:46:45.380 like i'm not good at holding grudges whereas me and your mother will hold a vendetta to the grave 0.56

00:46:51.160 Yeah, and beyond it, according to the Greeks.

00:46:54.280 Even those who couldn't physically escape their tombs were seen as threats,

00:46:57.440 as mediums could easily summon restless spirits to commit terrible acts.

00:47:01.640 These ideas were widely accepted,

00:47:03.600 rooted in the Greeks' cultural and religious beliefs

00:47:05.900 which viewed death as not always final

00:47:07.800 and allowed for a blurry line between the living and the dead.

00:47:11.220 The term used here is revenant from the Latin word for returning.

00:47:14.680 Revenants are feared because they're believed to leave their graves at night

00:47:17.860 to harden the living.

00:47:18.720 to prevent them from doing so they must be sufficiently killed often through incineration

00:47:24.740 or dismemberment other methods to trap revenants include tying them up staking them flipping them

00:47:30.740 onto their stomachs burying them deep or weighing them down with heavy objects although rare evidence

00:47:36.160 of these practices has been found in archaeological records and i'll get into that a little bit more

00:47:40.380 later the remains of necromancy or the intentional summoning of the dead are also present in

00:47:45.700 archaeological finds but much of what we know about necromantic rituals comes from greek literature

00:47:51.080 the oldest description of such ritual is in book 11 of homer's odyssey where odysseus fills a pit

00:47:57.900 with milk honey wine water and barley sounds gross he then sacrifices a ram and a ewe letting

00:48:05.280 their blood mix with the offerings to summon the dead for answers to his questions but that doesn't

00:48:10.400 sound right that sounds like they're just trying to keep that sounds like a slip and slide inside

00:48:14.120 the grave like nobody nobody's revenant now to that with milk and honey and blood and

00:48:18.600 god knows what else you'd be trying to get out and then you'd be sliding back in

00:48:21.440 at least you wouldn't get like side-eyed if you went into like tesco and bought all those things

00:48:27.880 so they're all pretty easy to get aren't they milk so honey wine water and barley

00:48:31.160 imagine the shape of us going up to the graveyard with honey and water and milk

00:48:35.380 digging up a grave and filling it up at that site and if somebody came up what are you doing

00:48:40.760 and it's like, schleiden.

00:48:42.960 Stop asking questions. 0.68

00:48:45.640 Additionally, the Greeks use curse tablets.

00:48:48.320 Emily covered curse tablets pretty extensively

00:48:50.360 in our Greco-Roman witchcraft episode.

00:48:53.500 The curse tablets are known as ketodesmoi

00:48:56.100 to invoke the dead.

00:48:57.640 These are binding spells inscribed on thin sheets of lead,

00:49:00.680 often shaped like tongues or leaves,

00:49:02.900 and were placed in graves

00:49:03.960 during secret nighttime ceremonies.

00:49:08.040 Messages on these tablets were meant

00:49:09.760 for the underworld deities

00:49:10.860 who were expected to compel

00:49:12.480 the souls of the dead

00:49:13.500 to fulfill the request of the living.

00:49:16.320 It'd be pretty annoying

00:49:17.120 if you were like Hades or Persephone

00:49:19.260 and you're like, 0.99

00:49:19.820 for fuck's sake, 0.98

00:49:20.580 like they keep sending this stuff 0.99

00:49:21.860 and we won't have time.

00:49:23.680 Petitioners often sought

00:49:25.020 to rectify wrongs

00:49:26.100 such as murder

00:49:26.720 or inheritance theft.

00:49:28.620 Why is that specifically mentioned?

00:49:30.500 A lot of inheritance theft going on. 0.93

00:49:33.600 This prick went and died 0.98

00:49:34.580 and didn't leave me the house. 0.99

00:49:35.900 He took my money.

00:49:38.000 But cursed tablets

00:49:39.060 were also used to gain advantages in love or business and next we have norse revenants so

00:49:46.380 drogar are reanimated corpses that dwell in burial mounds often guarding treasure they sit up in 0.97

00:49:54.220 their graves rather than lie down which is fucking horrifying why are you sitting up unlike ghosts 0.98

00:49:59.440 they have physical bodies with superhuman strength and the ability to grow in size however they 0.99

00:50:05.160 cannot hide the stench of decay or their swollen deathly blue or pale appearance drogar use their

00:50:11.680 immense size to crush victims or devour them by drinking their blood they also roam the countryside

00:50:17.520 riding animals like cattle or horses to death through exhaustion why are you riding cattle

00:50:24.660 to exhaustion but like cows can't even run fast i don't know they can be fast enough when they're

00:50:31.020 motivated when you startle them yeah but they're very like they'll break a leg quicker than they 0.84

00:50:35.600 run fast like we know we have cows around here as skilled sorcerers they can shapeshift 1.00

00:50:42.700 to defeat a draugr one must cut off its head burn the body and scatter the ashes into the sea 1.00

00:50:48.980 it's very that's a lot that's that's a lot of fucking effort it's a big it's a big undertaking 1.00

00:50:55.620 and what if you aren't anywhere near the sea well you just want to whack off a leg and fucking run 0.96

00:51:00.340 yeah it would slow them down anyway 0.99

00:51:02.660 so it's

00:51:05.100 pretty well established that

00:51:07.120 Drogar are the inspiration for the 0.99

00:51:09.120 wights in Game of Thrones 0.99

00:51:10.320 they're also in God of War, Skyrim

00:51:13.300 and Baldur's Gate

00:51:15.340 for my gamer boys

00:51:16.440 thank you very much

00:51:17.320 we're also very

00:51:18.760 gotta appeal to my male audience

00:51:20.780 that's it 1.00

00:51:21.600 the women are too busy reading about milking a minotaur 1.00

00:51:24.620 they're not milking no minotaur 0.57

00:51:26.540 but so the

00:51:29.460 definition from the game of thrones wiki is white is a reanimated corpse either human or animal

00:51:34.500 raised from death by the use of necromancy whites raised by the white walkers were often referred

00:51:40.000 to collectively as the army of the dead and it also gave us the greatest scene in game of thrones 0.93

00:51:45.980 where they rose a dragon from the dead the grettis saga is renowned for its portrayal of old norse

00:51:52.780 revenants the saga tells us tale of a powerful warrior named grettir who battles various monsters

00:51:58.880 throughout his journey ultimately becoming monstrous himself and ending up exiled in a cave

00:52:04.080 where he becomes the target of heroic attacks in the saga grettir encounters two revenants

00:52:09.060 the first is car the old a hag bull or mound dweller who haunts his own grave and the surrounding

00:52:16.460 island he didn't get very powerful no he didn't he haunts his own grave like all right unless

00:52:22.360 anybody's coming to visit you you're not going to see anybody grettir's friend out then shares

00:52:27.800 the story about car out on the headland stands a grave mound in it was laid car the old thorfinn's

00:52:34.660 father at first father and son shared a single farm on the island but after car died he returned

00:52:40.720 from the dead and began walking it in again eventually driving away all the other farmers

00:52:45.720 who owned the land there which if he wasn't really dead that was an absolutely ingenious way of

00:52:51.540 getting more land you just share a scare people away from it and then you can take it by adverse

00:52:55.780 possession. When Gretir enters Carr's Barrow he is met with a foul odour and a horrifying sight.

00:53:03.080 After he disturbs the treasure hoard within the revenant rises to attack Gretir but he is

00:53:09.740 ultimately put to rest by decapitation. The second revenant in the story is Glam who died on Yule.

00:53:17.860 People became aware that Glam was not resting in peace. He wrought such havoc that some people 0.95

00:53:23.220 fainted at the sight of him while others went out of their minds. After a battle Gretir eventually

00:53:29.360 got Glam on his back. Just before delivering the killing blow Glam succeeded in cursing Gretir

00:53:36.020 because Glam was endowed with more evil force than most other ghosts and thus he was able to speak 0.98

00:53:42.160 and leave Gretir with the curse after his death. So those are our Norse revenants or Draugr and 0.93

00:53:49.660 then probably the best known depictions of evidence is from medieval britain in the middle

00:53:57.160 ages william of newburgh documented several cases of supernatural occurrences intending them as a

00:54:04.520 warning to posterity he noted that such stories were quite common and remarked if i were to record

00:54:10.020 all the instances of this kind that i have confirmed in our times the task would be immensely

00:54:14.840 laborious and troublesome which sounds like a cop out to me well he was on to battles he's like

00:54:21.260 i don't have time but just trust me bro that's the source trust me bro one particular story

00:54:26.940 tells of a man of quote evil conduct who is fleeing from the law and decides to hide in

00:54:33.560 the province of york in a misguided move he chooses to marry why would you get married when

00:54:39.640 you're on the lam. Consumed by jealousy he hides in the rafters of his bedroom and catches his wife

00:54:45.120 in an act of infidelity with a young local man. However he accidentally falls to the floor

00:54:50.120 mortally wounding himself. What a humiliating sequence of events. Find your wife in bed with

00:54:55.660 another man and then you fall out of the roof. He dies a few days later. As Newberg recounts

00:55:00.540 a Christian burial indeed he received though unworthy of it. It did not much benefit him

00:55:05.420 for issuing by the handiwork of satan from his grave at night time and pursued by a pack of

00:55:11.240 dogs with horrible barkings that's a really good like visual isn't it yeah he wandered through the

00:55:16.860 courts and around the house while all men made fast their doors and did not dare to go abroad

00:55:21.800 on any errand whatever from the beginning of the night until the sunrise for fear of meeting and

00:55:27.260 being beaten black and blue by this vagrant monster um he actually ended up killing a bunch 0.93

00:55:32.380 of the town people. 0.86

00:55:33.660 Did he actually kill him?

00:55:34.620 Because I remember hearing

00:55:35.600 about this before

00:55:36.260 and he was just going around

00:55:37.780 baiting the head off people 0.81

00:55:38.700 like he would get out 0.99

00:55:39.480 come out of his grave at night

00:55:40.780 and batter a load of people

00:55:41.880 and then come back in

00:55:43.860 like Russell Crowe

00:55:44.580 fighting around the world.

00:55:47.720 It just sounds like

00:55:48.720 a Saturday night

00:55:49.400 in any small town in the world.

00:55:51.360 He was on bath salts

00:55:52.980 on Saturday night

00:55:53.940 went around clean 0.97

00:55:55.040 slapping the head off people 0.99

00:55:56.180 and then went back to the grave. 0.99

00:55:57.840 I saw him in the takeaway.

00:55:59.780 He was in Abrakebab

00:56:01.000 getting a kebab last night

00:56:02.460 and then he clean boxed the head

00:56:04.160 off the bouncer

00:56:04.820 and ended up in the grave.

00:56:07.220 Now he's barred from Abra. 0.95

00:56:10.060 Abra kebabra is a chain

00:56:11.980 of fast food restaurants in Ireland

00:56:13.860 for our international listeners. 0.85

00:56:16.300 They do big shock kebabs. 0.98

00:56:19.000 Thereupon snatching up a spade

00:56:20.660 of but indifferent sharpness of edge

00:56:22.800 and hastening to the cemetery,

00:56:25.180 they, the townspeople,

00:56:26.720 began to dig

00:56:27.440 and whilst they were thinking

00:56:28.760 that they would have to dig

00:56:29.900 to a greater depth,

00:56:31.000 they suddenly before much of the earth had been removed laid bare the corpse swollen to to an

00:56:37.320 enormous corpulence what a word corpulence yeah big boy yeah big boy yeah chunky boy with its

00:56:43.360 countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood did he have to go into this much detail

00:56:48.040 hate that word turgid while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces

00:56:53.720 the young men however spurred on by wrath feared not and inflicted a wound upon the senseless

00:56:59.920 carcass out of which incontinently flows such a stream of blood that it might have been taken for

00:57:05.980 a leech filled with the blood of many persons then dragging it beyond the village they speedily

00:57:12.500 constructed a funeral pile and upon one of them saying that the pestilennial pestilential it's a

00:57:18.600 new word for me and upon one of them saying that the pestilential body would not burn unless its

00:57:23.880 heart were torn out the other laid open its side by repeated blows of the blunted spade and thrusting

00:57:29.880 in his hand dragged out the accursed heart this being torn piecemeal and the body now consigned 0.97

00:57:35.740 to the flames see if he wasn't a revet they just basically dug up a corpse and went hammered it

00:57:44.140 yeah they just battered that corpse for no reason whatsoever in another tale newberg recounts the

00:57:49.440 story of a woman whose husband has recently passed away one night the deceased husband returns and

00:57:55.060 visits her in her bedchamber, frightening her upon awakening and nearly crushing her with the

00:58:00.000 unbearable weight of his body. This haunting continues for three nights and the revenant

00:58:04.860 extends his night-time visits to other nearby family members and neighbours, becoming a

00:58:10.580 quote serious nuisance. Eventually he even begins to wander around the village during the day.

00:58:16.560 The issue was ultimately resolved by the Bishop of Lincoln who wrote a letter of absolution.

00:58:21.440 the man's tomb was opened

00:58:22.960 revealing that his body was still inside

00:58:25.140 the letter was then placed on his chest

00:58:27.040 and the tomb was reinterred and sealed

00:58:28.960 and that resolved the whole thing

00:58:31.580 I love you but see if

00:58:33.440 you're able to come back

00:58:34.700 don't come back to me and lie on top of me

00:58:36.180 it's bad enough that you can't move with your broken arm

00:58:41.100 and then we go forward

00:58:45.120 a little bit in time

00:58:46.620 to Ireland

00:58:48.500 and of course we have to have our own version of everything

00:58:51.080 there was a discovery of skeletons were with rocks in their mouths in kilta sheen county

00:58:58.100 roscommon which reflected the ancient fear of revenants who were believed to have had the power

00:59:03.600 to come back from their graves to harass their loved ones or others against whom they had a 0.97

00:59:07.960 grudge these fucking grudge keepers huh one of them was lying with his head looking straight up 0.99

00:59:12.860 and a large black stone had been deliberately thrust into his mouth while the other had his 1.00

00:59:17.640 head turned to the side and had an even larger stone wedged quite violently into his mouth so

00:59:22.360 that his jaws were almost dislocated explained the archaeologist there was no doubt that the

00:59:27.500 skeletons had been subjected to deviant burials which are sometimes associated with demonic

00:59:31.880 possession revenants or the walking dead are often tended to be people who are outsiders in society

00:59:37.780 when living there's a known tradition of revenants in irish folklore and indeed it has been suggested

00:59:42.620 that Bram Stoker got the inspiration for Dracula not from Romanian folktale but from an Irish legend

00:59:48.500 about an evil chieftain who had to be killed three times after he came back looking for a

00:59:52.880 bowl of blood to sustain him and that's the story of the Avertac which we're not going to cover in

00:59:58.600 this episode because I think it's more a vampire story than a revenant story and I want to save

01:00:03.260 it for that and so how have we as a society decided that we are going to protect ourselves

01:00:09.640 against revenants well as you may have picked up deviant burials are burials with something done to

01:00:16.900 the corpse to stop them from coming back in january 2017 archaeologists uncovered a roman

01:00:24.540 british skeleton in stanwick northamptonshire with an unusual twist the corpse was buried

01:00:30.240 face down and its tongue had been cut out and replaced with a stone just like with the irish

01:00:34.760 ones. Simon Mays, a human skeletal biologist, suggested the man's behaviour was likely seen

01:00:40.900 as odd or threatening, which is kind of sad if he was just a bit strange, warranting such a deviant

01:00:46.260 burial. These types of burials found across Europe often aim to scapegoat the deceased for various

01:00:51.520 misfortunes, raising from disease to bad weather. What kind of power would you have to have like

01:00:56.820 over the weather in that way? The most famous examples of deviant burials are vampiric, often 0.97

01:01:02.120 associated with staking or weighing down bodies to prevent them from rising again in bulgaria

01:01:07.140 skeletons have often been found with iron rods through their chests and other graves across

01:01:12.220 europe have bodies decapitated or pinned down with rocks these practices are based on the belief that

01:01:17.780 they would return as revenants prone burial as in the case in stanwick was often the method to stop

01:01:23.860 the dead from rising ensuring that they dug deeper into the earth instead of out which is really 0.90

01:01:29.500 fucking haunting some believed it punished the soul preventing it from ascending to heaven

01:01:33.860 others saw it as a precaution against restless spirits and the stone in the mouth may have been 0.99

01:01:40.400 a way to prevent the corpse from feeding on the living or to stop it from causing further misfortune

01:01:44.840 like floods or droughts which they blamed them for such beliefs even persisted into modern times

01:01:51.540 stories of corpse mutilation and deviant burial stretched well into the 19th and early 20th

01:01:56.600 centuries with communities taking drastic steps to protect themselves from what they saw as threats

01:02:02.300 from the dead in scotland according to the novelist nan shepherd farcar shaw had quote

01:02:08.360 troubled the neighborhood so that when he was dead they set five heavy stone keboks which are

01:02:13.600 cheese shaped rocks also a new word for name upon his flat tombstone to keep him under his grave is

01:02:21.540 still enclosed beneath the metal cage or marked safe to stop anyone from removing the stones which

01:02:26.920 were laid in 1405 and at Tyburn and Fife in 1704 the corpse of Lilius 80 was buried in the foreshore

01:02:34.300 between high and low watermark with a heavy flat stone over it possibly argues historian Louise

01:02:40.480 Yeoman because of her confession to witchcraft and perhaps also because she may have committed

01:02:45.460 suicide whilst in prison and that was um as we know a cause for people to believe that you cannot

01:02:51.700 be buried in consecrated grounds in february 1824 laborers digging a saw pit near tintern abbey

01:02:59.300 found a skeleton buried face down in an orchard an elderly local woman suspected this to be the

01:03:05.260 remains of a man thought to have been murdered after he mysteriously disappeared from his house

01:03:10.320 about a century ago. If the man's murderer feared that he would return then he would have been

01:03:15.240 buried prone so that the corpse dug itself deeper into the ground rather than out of it. An intriguing

01:03:19.940 twist on that logic occurred in 1889 when during an Edinburgh murder trial the clothes of the

01:03:26.480 murdered man were produced in court but not his boots. It transpired that the local constable

01:03:31.500 had been ordered to bury them on the shore between high and low water mark to prevent the dead man

01:03:36.460 walking a precaution which shows that murder victims could be feared by others beside their

01:03:41.440 murderer well that would also mean that you have to have complete faith that you caught the murderer

01:03:47.340 because what if you have the wrong guy in custody because they could still come back for the real 0.97

01:03:50.980 murder though we may never know the exact reasons behind each case these burials practices remind us

01:03:57.520 of the deep-seated fear of the dead returning to harm the living and thus concludes our episode

01:04:03.940 on zombies and revenants

01:04:06.320 I hope you enjoyed it

01:04:08.720 did you enjoy yourself

01:04:09.460 I did

01:04:09.760 I felt like I learned a lot

01:04:11.180 and hopefully we

01:04:12.820 shed some light

01:04:14.980 into the great mystery

01:04:16.280 that are zombies and revenants

01:04:17.880 did it get a little

01:04:19.740 bit less depressing

01:04:20.740 towards the end there

01:04:21.660 it wasn't all about slavery

01:04:22.880 yeah once we got away

01:04:23.780 from slavery

01:04:24.320 it was a bit more interesting

01:04:25.780 I think revenants

01:04:27.240 need to show up

01:04:27.860 more on movies

01:04:28.520 we're missing like

01:04:29.540 a good Sean Bean movie

01:04:30.600 with revenants in it

01:04:31.440 well he does die

01:04:32.100 and everything 0.98

01:04:32.560 yeah he'd be good

01:04:33.920 he'd be the ultimate revenant because

01:04:35.600 he could come back as anything. This time

01:04:37.800 Sean Bean is the revenant.

01:04:41.560 Um 0.98

01:04:42.040 I just like telling people that in Irish

01:04:44.200 his name means old woman.

01:04:46.000 That's it from us.

01:04:47.800 This has been probably an extra long episode.

01:04:50.740 I'd like to thank Ewan for

01:04:51.960 stepping in when Emily's

01:04:54.140 and my schedule didn't quite match up.

01:04:56.940 You're welcome. Thank you

01:04:58.140 for having me. You, the listener, have

01:05:00.320 another full length episode

01:05:01.980 of this season and then we are going to be closing out season two of rowan and pine can you believe

01:05:07.760 it yay we're also going to be sprinkling in some pine cones in between then and probably

01:05:12.580 between seasons two because you just can't stop a good thing huh some say emily may return as a

01:05:20.380 spirit yes emily i can almost hear her not twice emily there she is i miss her so

01:05:30.200 so i have been niamh and i have been ewan and thanks for listening to rowan and pine 0.98

01:05:38.020 in another october episode and fuck yeah folklore you have to say fuck yeah folklore 0.98

01:05:44.100 fuck yeah folklore thanks very much bye 1.00

01:06:00.200 Rowing in pine, spooky shit 1.00

01:06:09.240 For all your friends, zombies, goodnight 1.00

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Rowan & Pine: A Feminist Folklore & Mythology Podcast - October 16, 2024

Episode Thirty-Nine： Zombies & Revenants- zombussy [with Ewan]

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