CZM Book Club: Two Tales of Classic Horror, by Saki and Bierce

Summary

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Podcast Summary: It Could Happen Here

Episode: CZM Book Club – Two Tales of Classic Horror, by Saki and Bierce

Host: Margaret Killjoy
Release Date: October 19, 2025

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Overview

This Book Club episode, hosted by Margaret Killjoy, delves into two classic short stories from the horror genre: "The Open Window" by Saki (H.H. Munro) and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" by Ambrose Bierce. Killjoy frames these tales as snapshots of shifting trends in horror fiction—from the Gothic and supernatural to the psychological and cosmic. The stories serve as a jumping-off point for broader discussions about horror's evolution, narrative devices, cultural lineage, and how tropes like madness, ghosts, and unreliable narration reflect deeper preoccupations of their respective times.

Margaret delivers full readings of both stories, intertwined with insightful commentary, literary context, and energetic asides touching on everything from the sexual politics of the authors to horror’s signature plot “twists.”

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Why Old Horror? & Episode Approach

• Margaret’s Relationship with Horror (02:24):
  She expresses a love-hate relationship with horror—drawn to the spooky and uncanny, but less interested in gore or torture-heavy subgenres.

  "I really like spooky and supernatural and the things that make you feel closer to the veil... But I also like, can't stand a lot of types of horror." (02:24)

• Focus on Contrasting Old and New Horror:
  Margaret emphasizes how older stories can illuminate the shifting cultural views of the supernatural and the evolution of narrative structure.

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Story 1: "The Open Window" by Saki (H.H. Munro)

Background (03:45)

• H.H. Munro, penname "Saki," drew inspiration from Oscar Wilde and was known for his satirical take on British society.
• His work often lampoons Victorian conventions, particularly with “stuffy aristocrats.”
• Saki’s queerness and use of “Saki” (an erotic figure in Persian poetry) are briefly explored.

Story Summary & Themes (04:15 – 10:48; resumed at 14:55)

• The story follows the neurotic Frampton Nuttall, visiting a country estate for rest. He encounters Vera, a mischievous 15-year-old who tells him a tragic ghost story centered around a perpetually open window.
• The twist: Vera fabricated the ghostly events for her own amusement, causing Frampton to flee in terror—her "specialty" being “romance at short notice.”

Commentary & Literary Context (18:10)

• Margaret loves the story's playful deception and meta-commentary on genre tropes.

  "The reveal at the end of the story that the teenager just loves fucking with all the adults by making up ghost stories—I love." (18:14)

• Notes how this story lampoons contemporary horror’s obsession with hysteria, especially among women, flipping expectations by giving the girl agency.
• Connects the story’s publication (1910s) to the tail end of the Gothic revival (1880s–1890s) and notes its proximity to works like "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and "Dracula."
• Literary insight from Hazel (episode researcher) highlights:

  "Gothic horror...is obsessed with ghosts and hysteric women...and this ever-creeping fear of the past intruding upon the present.” (21:48)

• In this story, such “madness and ghosts” are both mocked and wielded by the girl as a tool.

Notable Quotes

• On name choices:

  "Frampton Nuttall...is absolutely the perfect name for like a boring, neurotic Victorian Englishman." (19:18)

• On genre development:

  "The story’s emphasis on sanity and whose narration we’re willing to believe foreshadows where horror is going to go—psychological horror." (22:51)

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Story 2: "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" by Ambrose Bierce

Background (25:10)

• Bierce hailed from Ohio, fought for the Union in the Civil War, and was known for satire, anti-Confederate views, and acerbic works like "The Devil’s Dictionary."
• His mysterious disappearance in Mexico after traveling to cover the revolution is highlighted as eerily prescient, given the story’s themes.

Story Summary & Analysis (27:50 – 36:13; resumed from 36:13)

• This story, written in 1886, follows a nameless narrator who wakes in a bleak landscape, recognizing ruins and gravestones, eventually realizing he is dead and wandering the ancient ruined city of Carcosa.
• The writing brims with Gothic, almost biblical, language and moodiness.

Commentary & Literary Context (36:13 – 46:18)

• Margaret admires the biblical quality of the prose and the influential “he was dead all along” reveal.

  "The ‘he was dead all along’ trope is a staple of gothic horror, but where it came from before it was a trope is much more interesting…"(36:33)

• Hazel’s notes provide additional context, contrasting the focus on madness and reliability in Gothic and cosmic horror:

  "Gothic horror and later cosmic [horror] are so fixated on madness, but the choice to zoom in on sanity is a really interesting contrast." (38:15)

• The city of Carcosa and certain names introduced by Bierce are picked up by later writers—especially Robert W. Chambers’ "King in Yellow," which would later inspire H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror mythos.
• Margaret points out how Lovecraft’s fear-based cosmic horror (often steeped in xenophobia and reactionary anxiety) draws roots (perhaps ironically) from Bierce—a left-leaning, anti-imperialist.

Notable Quotes

• On cosmic vs. gothic themes:

  "Gothic horror stories are about fear of oneself and one’s family members—a fear of the known. Cosmic horror is often about the fear of things beyond us...the fear of the unknown." (41:45)

• On Carcosa as metaphor:

  "For Bierce, Carcosa is meant to sound like carcass...The city ends up serving as a parallel to the narrator's body—the city as body." (40:40)

• On the evolution of horror:

  "At the end of the day, this is a story about waking up to realize the world has continued without you...Time comes for us all in the end." (43:10)

• On Bierce and Lovecraft:

  "Cosmic horror, if you trace it back far enough, is someone who fought for the Union and went off to go support Pancho Villa…famously not a right-wing character in history. So whatever, take that HP Lovecraft..." (45:22)

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Memorable Moments

• Margaret’s playful host persona—introducing the episode as "the only book club where you don’t have to do the reading because I do it for you," wryly calling herself "the insufferable gay person in your phone on demand." (02:24)
• Her gleeful, meta critique of horror genre conventions and affectionate ribbing of names and plot mechanics.
• The inside-joke recurring jabs at lost networks (“fuck Lost”) and Lovecraft’s personal failings as a person.
• Insightful and humorous asides—referring to the possibility of doing “Cool People” episodes on the authors, or tongue-in-cheek statements about reader engagement and social media.

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Important Timestamps

• 02:24 – Margaret’s philosophy on horror
• 03:45 – Background on Saki and intro to "The Open Window"
• 04:15 – 10:48 – Full reading of "The Open Window" (with brief breaks for ads)
• 14:55 – Return from ads; conclusion of "The Open Window"
• 18:10 – 23:00 – Literary and genre analysis of "The Open Window"
• 25:10 – Bierce biography and context
• 27:50 – 32:07 – Full reading of "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (with brief ad interruption)
• 36:13 – Return from ads; conclusion and analysis of "An Inhabitant of Carcosa"
• 38:15 – Hazel’s notes on genre evolution
• 41:45 – Discussion: Gothic vs. Cosmic horror
• 43:10 – Carcosa as metaphor and existential horror
• 45:22 – Political roots of cosmic horror vs. Lovecraft
• 46:18 – Closing remarks

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Final Thoughts

Margaret wraps the episode by reaffirming the throughline between the two stories: both are about madness, credibility, point of view, and ghosts, and both mark key movements in the horror genre from the supernatural to the psychological to the cosmic. She encourages listeners to check out the stories themselves, keep up with her work, and cheekily reminds everyone that “HP” in Lovecraft “stands for Harry Potter.”

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Compiled by an expert podcast summarizer for listeners who want the depth, context, and wry humor of the episode—sans sponsors and intros.

Transcript

[Margaret Killjoy]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Margaret Killjoy]

Storm in a sewer.

[Narrator (Horror Story Voice)]

That was dumb.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Do not follow my example.

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Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you your podcast.

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Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new SNAFU Every single episode.

[Co-host or Guest on Snafu]

32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop.

[Margaret Killjoy]

What?

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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America, y' all better wake the hell up.

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Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

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Call Zone Media.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Book Club Book Club Book hello and welcome to Clothesline Media Book Club. The only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. The only book club where you don't have to go to your English class to hear an insufferable gay person who won't shut up because I am the insufferable gay person in your phone on demand. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and this week it is still spooky Month. And let's be honest, it's always Spooky month. I have this really love hate relationship with horror. I really like spooky and supernatural and the things that make you feel closer to the veil. And I think about death all the time and I write about it a lot. But I also like, can't stand a lot of types of horror. Just like the slasher stuff or, I don't know, a lot of it doesn't work for me. So when I say it might always be Spooky month, that doesn't mean that I'll read you everything because whatever, okay. We are still doing horror because it is October and I wanted to do some old timey stories. So we're going to do some old timey stories because I really like contrasting new stories and old stories and like thinking about the ways that story itself has changed and how we think about the supernatural has changed and all this kind of stuff. We are going to do two stories for you this week because they are slightly shorter and I am excited about these stories because they are both really fun and spooky. They're also both written by authors I'm really fascinated by and I want to learn more about possibly enough that I want to do Cool People episodes about them. And they sit at this really interesting place in the lineage of the horror genre. I never actually heard these stories before, which you can call me a poser about if you would like. All engagement is good. Engagement. Don't call me a poser. It'll hurt my feelings. Okay. The first story is called the Open Window and it's by Hector Hugh Monroe, better known and usually attributed by his pen name, Psaki. He was inspired by people like Oscar Wilde, who I did do a bunch of episodes about on Cool People. And like Oscar Wilde, Psaki was gay. And actually it's going to come up in a really interesting way in this story, in this like total offhand way that is like not what you would expect from the 19th century. His pen name, Saki, is a reference to a symbolic and erotic figure in Arabic and Persian poetry. And Saki's writing is remembered for how it satirizes English social conventions around the turn of the century and seems to often feature stuffy aristocrats being eaten by wild animals. And we are pro old aristocrats being eaten by wild animals on this podcast. Although that's not what this story is. This story is one of his supernatural ghost stories and it's full of little jabs at weird Victorian mannerisms and it's got a twist because it's a horror story. How can a horror story not have a twist? Actually, if you go back old enough, they probably don't have twists. But this story the Open Window by Psaki My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttle, said a very self possessed young lady of 15. In the meantime you must try and put up with me. Frampton Nuttall endeavored to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately, he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a secession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing. I know how it'll be, his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat. You will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice. Frampton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division. Do you know many of the people round here? Asked the niece when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion. Hardly a soul, said Frampton. My sister was staying here at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here. He made the last statement in a tone of distant regret. Then you know practically nothing about my aunt, pursued the self possessed young lady. Only her name and address, admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sapleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation. Her great tragedy happened just three years ago, said the child. That would be since your sister's time. Her tragedy? Asked Frampton. Somehow in this restful country spot, tragedy seemed out of place. You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon, said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened onto a lawn. Just as a side note, the phrase French window here, I think is referencing what we would think of as like glass porch doors. It is quite warm for the time of the year, said Frampton. But has that window got anything to do with the tragedy? Out through that window three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back in crossing the moor to their favorite snipe shooting ground, they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog it had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it. Here the child's voice lost its self possessed note and became falteringly human. Poor Aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them and walk in at that window just like they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear Aunt. She has often told me how they went out. Her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm and Rani, her youngest brother, singing Birdie. Why do you bound as he always did to tease her because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still quiet evenings like this I almost get a creepy feeling they will all walk in through that window. She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Frampton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance. I hope Vera has been amusing you, she said. She has been quite interesting, said Frampton. I hope you don't mind the open window, said Mrs. Saplton briskly. My husband and brothers will be back home directly from shooting and they always come in this way. They have been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you men folk, isn't it? She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Frampton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic. He was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary. And do you know what else is here to pay a visit? It's the horrible visage of goods and services that support this sho. I can't do it with this. I'm trying. I'm trying to do it this way. Support this Shoooo. Isn't that fun? Don't we all love ads?

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Hey, it's Ed Helms. And welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode.

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32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, we're stop.

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[Ed Helms]

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Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's, let's, let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Narrator (Horror Story Voice)]

There's a vile sickness in Abbas Town. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

[Margaret Killjoy]

You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien.

[Narrator (Horror Story Voice)]

Get back, everyone, and if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body, and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

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[Narrator (Horror Story Voice)]

The Devil walks in Abbostown.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And we're back and I'm gonna start doing the thing where I come back from ads where I like say the last sentence or so before the break. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary. The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest. An absence of mental excitement and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise, announced Frampton, who labored under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. On the matter of diet, they are not so much in agreement, he continued. No, said Mrs. Saplton in a voice that only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention, but not to what Frampton was saying. Here they are at last. She cried, Just in time for tea. And don't they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes? Frampton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear, Frampton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction. In the deepening twilight, three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window. They all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept climbing close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house. Then a hoarse young voice chanted out in the dusk. I said, birdie, why do you bow? Frampton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat. The hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A single cyclist coming along the road had to run into a hedge to avoid an imminent collision. Here we are, my dear, said the bearer of the white Macintosh, coming in through the window. Fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up? A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttall, said Mrs. Sapleton, who could only talk about his illnesses, and then dashed off without a word of good bye or apology. When you arrived, one would think he had seen a ghost. I expect it was the spaniel, said the niece calmly. He told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him enough to make anyone lose their nerve. Romance at short notice was her specialty. Okay, I always say I like that story so much because I like that story so much, because I like how mischievous it is. Also, we don't use the word romance to mean fantasy enough. Like, why are they two separate genres? Fantasy, romantasy. But they're synonyms. They're already synonyms anyway. The reveal at the end of the story that the teenager just loves fucking with all the adults around her by making up ghost stories. I love. I also love that the protagonist's name is Frampton Nuttall, which is absolutely the perfect name for like a boring, neurotic Victorian Englishman. It also is a name that I would make up if I was trying to make fun of the English. I also thought that there was a line in there about like, you like the men folk, don't you? And I actually was mistaken. On first read, I thought it was a, like, you're a gay, but actually it was just something like, just like you men folk, like, you know, oh, you're always getting mud on the carpets and the story was also released in the 1910s, about 20 to 30 years after the Big Gothic Revival of the 1880s and 1890s, which was the time period that gave us things like Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of 1886, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1897. And then Hazel, who does a lot of the episode prep and picks a lot of stories, said about this that Gothic fiction, or Gothic horror, depending on how you like it, is obsessed with ghosts and it's obsessed with hysteric women. And they're obsessed with this ever creeping fear of the past intruding upon the present, like in Jane Eyre. So Hazel wrote this, by the way, in prep for this episode. Hazel read a lot of, ooh, emotionally tortured lady saw a ghost. And it's a metaphor kind of stories. And so this one was frankly a breath of fresh air. So this story is really interesting one because we see all of those things, madness, ghosts, etc. Played for laughs, but we also see a young girl acting with agency and weaponizing those stereotypes for her own amusement. And it feels like the story is really poking fun at this preoccupation where every small thing must have a creepy tragedy behind it and it's driving the wife insane. Especially given how easily Frampton Nuttall, whose name none of us are going to get over. It's especially given how easily Frampton Nuttall is led to believe a supernatural tale over what his own eyes are telling him. That, like, you know, men live in the house, that the returned hunters are alive and well. He's still just like, oh, it's clearly a ghost. And it ends up being a story about how easily we believe that women are crazy in a fun way. And that's something. It's a signpost in the development for the genre. Horror has mostly been supernatural and folkloric through the end of the 1800s, like ghost stories, haunted mansions, vampires, all that shit. And at the turn of the 20th century, it takes a turn towards psychological and fantastical cosmic horror, alien pulp fiction and all that. So this story's emphasis on sanity and whose narration we're willing to believe ends up foreshadowing a lot of where horror is going to go. And we're going to trace how gothic horror becomes psychological horror becomes cosmic horror with this next story. Our next story is called An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce. Bierce is really fucking interesting. From what I can tell, he's mostly known as this satirist and journalist, like a lot of writers back then who were like, kind of like just doing their thing or whatever. But he's also well respected for short stories. He was born in Ohio. He fought for the Union in the Civil War, and he writes a lot about his experiences of war in a way that I think I'd really respect. But I haven't read all of his stuff yet. But it seems like he both hated the horrors of war and he fucking hated confederates, which is the right mix, if you ask me. Like, he has this whole story that the name of it escapes me because I forgot to put it in the script. But it's like a story about, like, a hanging, and it's about a Confederate being hanged. And it's just this, like. I don't know, really. It's a shockingly visceral description of the experience of being hanged. He also wrote the Devil's Dictionary, which is the whole dictionary of satirical definitions. There's actually a modern one called the Contradictionary by Crimethink. That's really cool, and I think it must be a reference to this one. But within the Devil's Dictionary, there's a couple good ones, like conservative, noun, a statesman who is enamored of existing evils as distinguished from the liberal who wishes to replace them with others. And egotist, noun, a person of low taste, more interested in himself than me. And maybe the one of the season is autocrat, noun, A dictatorial gentleman with no other restraint upon him than the hand of the assassin, the founder and patron of that great political institution, the dynamite bombshell system. He also wrote a satirical poem about, I think, President McKinley getting assassinated the year before President McKinley was assassinated. And so he kind of got in some hot water about that. And in 1913, he went down to Mexico to embed with Pancho Villa to cover the Mexican Revolution as a conflict journalist. And he disappeared, and his body was never recovered. Oral tradition in that area of Mexico holds that he was shot by Spaniards. But if Game of Thrones has taught me anything, it's that if a character dies off screen, they're coming back. So I like to believe that Bierce is still out there killing imperialists and writing witty little diatribes. But eventually I might do a whole thing about him. And actually, the beginning of this story talks about how sometimes a person dies and their body disappears. And I don't know, it's just interesting because then his body was never recovered. Just saying. Just saying. This is a ghost story written by him. It's from 1886, and so it's from that Gothic Revival. And it's about 20 years earlier than the story we just read. And it's got a good twist, and maybe you'll even see it coming. I didn't. Hazel claims that they did. The story is called An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce. And you're gonna have to bear with me. The first paragraph has a lot of the's and Thous and Haziths. And I'm gonna do my best. An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce for there be diverse sorts of death, some wherein the body remaineth, and in some it vanisheth quite away. With the spirit this commonly occurreth only in solitude. Such is God's will, and none seeing the end. We say the man is lost or gone on some long journey, which indeed he hath. But sometimes it hath happened in sight of many, as abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of death the spirit also dieth and this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigour for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again, and in that place where the body did decay. Pondering these words of hali, whom God rests, and questioning their full meaning, as one who, having an intimation, yet doubts if there be not something behind other than that which he has discerned. I noted not whither I had strayed until a sudden chill wind striking my face revived me in a sense of my surroundings. I observed with astonishment that everything seemed unfamiliar. On every side of me stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of plain, covered with a tall overgrowth of sear grass, which rustled and whistled in the autumn wind with heaven knows what mysterious and disquieting suggests question protruded at long intervals. Above it stood strangely shaped and somber colored rocks, which seemed to have an understanding with one another and to exchange looks of uncomfortable significance, as if they had reared their heads to watch the issue of some foreseen event. A few blasted trees here and there appeared as leaders in this malevolent conspiracy of silent expectation. The day, I thought, must be far advanced. Though the sun was invisible, and although sensible that the air was raw and chill, my consciousness of that fact was rather mental than physical. I had no feeling of discomfort. Over all the dismal landscape a canopy of low lead colored clouds hung like a visible curse. In all this there were a menace and a portent, a hint of evil, an intimation of doom. Bird, beast, or insect, there was none. The wind sighed in the bare branches of the dead trees, and the grey grass bent to whisper its dread secret to the earth. But no other sound nor motion broke the awful repose of that dismal place. I observed in the herbage a number of weather worn stones, evidently shaped with tools. They were broken, covered with moss, and half sunken in the earth. Some lay prostrate, some leaned at various angles. None was vertical. They were obviously headstones of graves, though the graves themselves no longer existed. As either mounds or depressions, the years had leveled all scattered. Here and there more massive blocks showed where some pompous tomb or ambitious monument had once flung its feeble defiance at oblivion. So old seemed these relics, these vestiges of vanity and memorials of affection and piety, so battered and worn and stained, so neglected, deserted, forgotten the place that I could not help thinking myself the discoverer of the burial ground of a prehistoric race of men whose very name was long extinct. Filled with these reflections, I was for some time heedless of the sequence of my own experiences. But soon I How came I hither? A moment's reflection seemed to make this all clear and explain at the same time, though in a disquieting way, the singular character with which my fancy had invested all that I saw or heard. I was ill. I remembered now that I had been prostrated by a sudden fever, that my family had told me. In my periods of delirium I had constantly cried out for liberty and air and had been held in bed to prevent my escape out of doors. Now I had eluded the vigilance of my attendants and wandered hither toto, where I could not conjecture. Clearly I was at a considerable distance from the city where I dwelt, the ancient and famous city of Carcosa. No signs of human life were anywhere visible nor audible. No rising smoke, no watchdogs bark, no lowing of cattle, no shouts of children at play. Nothing but that dismal burial place with its air of mystery and dread. Due to my own disordered brain. Was I not becoming again delirious there, beyond human aid? Was it not indeed all an illusion of my madness? I called aloud the names of my wives and sons, reached out my hands in search, search of theirs. Even as I walked among the crumbling stones and in the withered grass, a noise behind me caused me to turn about. A wild animal, a lynx, was approaching. The thought came to if I break down here in the desert, if the fever return and I fail, this beast will be at my throat. I sprang toward it, shouting. It trotted tranquilly by within a hand's breadth of me and disappeared behind a rock. A moment later, a man's head appeared to rise out of the ground a short distance away. He was ascending the farther slope of a low hill whose crest was hardly to be distinguished from the general level. His whole figure soon came into view against the background of gray cloud. He was half naked, half clad in skins. His hair was unkempt, his beard long and ragged. In one hand he carried a bow and arrow. The other held a blazing torch with a long trail of black smoke. He walked slowly and with caution, as if he feared falling into some open grave concealed by the tall grass. The strange apparition surprised, but did not alarm, and taking to the a course as to intercept him, I met him almost face to face, accosting him with the familiar salutation, God keep you. He gave no heed, nor did he arrest his pace. Good stranger, I continued, I am ill and lost. Direct me, I beseech you, to Carcosa. The man broke into a barbarous chant in an unknown tongue, passing on and away. An owl on the branch of a decayed tree hooted dismally and was answered by another in the distance, looking upward, I saw, through a sudden rift in the clouds, Albedaren and the Hyades. In all this there was a hint of night, the lynx, the man with the torch, the owl. Yet I saw. I saw even the stars. In absence of the darkness, I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard. Under what awful spell did I exist? And dear listeners, I exist under a spell where twice an episode I have to break the flow and promote the wonderful ads that support this podcast.

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[Ed Helms]

Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu Every single episode.

[Co-host or Guest on Snafu]

32 lost nuclear weapons you're like, wait, stop.

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What?

[Ed Helms]

Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player who still wore knee pads. Yes, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of Guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna. I am, I am so psyched you're here.

[Co-host or Guest on Snafu]

What was that like for you to soft launch into the show?

[Ed Helms]

Sorry, Jenna. I'll be asking the questions today.

[Co-host or Guest on Snafu]

I forgot whose podcast we were doing.

[Ed Helms]

Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's, let's, let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or. Or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Narrator (Horror Story Voice)]

There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it, dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed.

[Margaret Killjoy]

You know how waking up from a dream, a familiar place can look completely alien. Get back, everyone.

[Narrator (Horror Story Voice)]

And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him, burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town.

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[Narrator (Horror Story Voice)]

The devil walks in abbost.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And we're back. I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard. Under what awful spell did I exist? I seated myself at the root of a great tree. Seriously to consider what it were best to do that I was mad. I could no longer doubt. Yet I recognized a ground of doubt. In the conviction of fever, I had no trace. I had withal a sense of exhilaration and vigor altogether unknown to me, a feeling of mental and physical exaltation. My senses seemed all alert. I could feel the air as a ponderous substance. I could hear the silence. A great root of the giant tree against whose trunk I leaned as I sat, held enclosed in its grasp, a slab of stone, a part of which protruded into a recess formed by another root. The stone was thus partly protected from from the weather. Though greatly decomposed, its edges were worn round its corners, eaten away, its surface deeply furrowed and scaled. Glittering particles of mica were visible in the earth around it, vestiges of its decomposition. This stone had apparently marked the grave out of which the tree had sprung ages ago. The tree's exacting roots had robbed the grave and made the stone a prisoner. A sudden wind pushed some dry leaves and twigs from the uppermost face of the stone. I saw the low relief letters of an inscription and bent to read it. God in heaven. My name in full. The date of my birth. The date of my death. A level shaft of light illuminated the the whole side of the tree as I sprang to my feet in terror. The sun was rising in the rosy east. I stood between the tree and his broad red disk. No shadow darkened the trunk. A chorus of howling wolves saluted the dawn. I saw them sitting on their haunches, singly and in groups, on the summits of irregular mounds and two maiolae filling a half of my desert prospect and extending to the horizon. And then I knew that these were the ruins of the ancient and famous city of Carcosa. Such are the facts imparted to the medium behroles by the spirit Huseb Alar Ribardin. That's the end of the story. Okay, so the prose in the story is so biblical without feeling too purple or overwritten, at least for the standards at the time. Like, it's not like you can see the difference in only like 20 years later, how they were writing. But 19th century had this whole thing, and it uses the like, thee was dead all along trope, which is a sort of staple of gothic horror, but it also gets used in contemporary stuff, like the show Lost. Spoilers for the TV show Lost, I guess. Even though, whatever, fuck Lost. It's the longest shaggy dog story, the most expensive shaggy dog story ever put to film. And I think that, like, he was dead all along trope isn't exactly my favorite trope these days, but where they come from before it's really as much of a trope is actually much more interesting to me. And I think that Bierce uses it to heighten the horror really well rather than just to kill all the stakes. Right? Because it's like, oh, fuck, I'm dead. Instead of like, ah, that explains it. I'm dead. Five seasons in Fuck you, Lost, which I don't think they even knew what was going to happen ahead of time. I'm so mad about Lost. Okay. And then Hazel wrote a lot of really interesting stuff about this, so I'm going to read it to you. I'm really drawn to this impulse to establish the point of view character as sane and fully capacitated. Gothic horror and later cosmic are so fixated on madness, but the choice to zoom in on sanity is a really interesting contrast. It's an important part of this story's horror that our narrator fully understands what's going on and can be trusted when he reveals that he's dead. Right. And even the spirit name checks at the end. Bierce didn't just invent this story. No, he wants you to know the name of the medium they channeled it through. He's actively trying to cultivate as much credibility in the framing of the story as he can. So the story is like, weirdly and quietly important in the horror lineage in that it introduces a ton of names that get picked up and recycled by later authors. Most notably, the City of Carcosa gets picked up by Robert W. Chambers for his 1895 short story collection called the King in Yellow, which is a series of interrelated stories where the characters discover and read a play called the King in Yellow that contains profound, incomprehensible truths about the universe that drive you mad. And as a sidebar, Chambers is also using yellow as the color of madness, much like book club alum Charlotte Perkins Gilman does later in the Yellow Wallpaper, which you can go back and re listen to if you want. So the King in Yellow, which goes on to inspire none other than. And please note that I'm crossing myself in penance when I name check this fucking guy. H.P. lovecraft. The ancient city of Carcosa, as well as the names Hahli, Hyades and Aldebaran, appear in Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, obviously influential in the genre less because readers at the time were reading him. He died early and lonely and broke, as he deserved Lovecraft again, but because other authors were reading him and being inspired. And also, Carcosa shows up in a ton of Other stuff, like True Detective, chilling Adventures of Sabrina. And also book club alum Hailey Piper's new book, A Game in Yellow, which sounds really fucking rad. It's about a lesbian couple that starts microdosing that play that drives you mad. The King in Yellow for sex Reasons. And it's a happy coincidence that these two are back to back anyway. This shit even pops up in A Song of Ice and fire by George R.R. martin. There's multiple Wikipedia pages about this stuff if you want a good rabbit hole. But Bierce doesn't give us too much information about the famed and ancient city of Carcosa. It's maybe in space, or maybe it's like Atlantis but in the desert, depending on who's writing it. Hazel's take is that for Bierce, Carcosa is meant to sound like carcass or whatever. It just does, regardless of what the author intended. So the city ends up serving as a parallel to the narrator's body. The city as body. Initially, the narrator is looking for the city he inhabited and the splendor of its heyday. After he realizes that he's dead, he sees the city in ruins, ancient and distant. But that's all the city really has to quote, unquote, do in the story. But importantly, none of the world building is what's brought forward in horror legacy. But that's okay, because this story isn't about world building. It's about mood and fuck. Does Bierce know how to construct a mood? For me, Hazel, this story is at a really interesting junction and juncture. Please cut that. This story is at a really interesting juncture in horror Legacy. We've talked before about Gothic horror being about ghosts and madness and the fear of the past intruding upon the present. Which is absolutely the world that this story is swimming in, with the death and spirits and ancient ruins. But Bierce is sometimes credited as an early writer of psychological horror. And we know that this story goes on to influence early cosmic horror. And that's a genre that's also interested in madness, but more so about the un understandable. The vastness of the universe, the inevitability that the future will come to erase the present, to draw an overly simplified binary. We often see Gothic horror stories is about fear of oneself and one's family members. A fear of the known. And cosmic horror is often about the fear of things beyond us and beyond our comprehension. Fear of time and space and oblivion, a fear of the unknown. And to me, Hazel, an inhabitant of Carcosa sits at such an interesting place between the two. This isn't a story where the ghost is a manifestation of trauma. Death and decay are very literal here. The ancient ruins of the city are not invoked to mark that the past is here now, but to show that the future has arrived and has pushed you out of the way. Literally no one can see or interact with the narrator. We get some good, like isn't Nature spooky scenes that are a touchstone of gothic fiction. And we also get a cosmic horror classic, unknowable tongue spoken by the man on the road. At the end of the day, this is a story about waking up to realize the world is continued without you. The slang you're used to isn't hip anymore. The young people are suddenly so much younger than you. Time comes for us all in the end. Or something like that. And Hazel wrote me a lot about this because both of us have been having a stressful week. I also really like this is Margaret's voice now. Well, it's always my voice, but this is me saying what I think about it. HP Lovecraft is like famously a racist. And cosmic horror for him is about this fear of the unknown, spooky foreigners and nature. He writes about trees. Like he's just terrified of trees. So he's clearly afraid of the chaos and change and diversity and organic stuff because he's sounds like a skill issue. But. But I think it's really interesting that. So people will be like, oh well, cosmic horror comes from this shit. Well, actually cosmic horror, if you trace it back far enough, is someone who like fought for the union and went off to go support Pancho Villa, you know, is famously not a right wing character in history. So whatever, take that HP Lovecraft, the dead person and yeah, I don't know. That's it for today. Two early psychological horror adjacent stories about madness, credibility, point of view and ghosts. We got both of these stories from Classic Tales of Horror from Canterbury Classics. I'm Margaret Killjoy, you can find me on this feed and on the Internet I have a substack. It's called Birds before the Storm and that's as good of a place as any to keep up with me. I'm on the various things. Take care of yourself, stay safe, stay dangerous. And never forget that the HP of HP Lovecraft stands for Harry Potter. Good night.

[Co-host or Guest on Snafu]

It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here. Updated [e-mail] sources thanks for listening.

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$15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra.

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[Margaret Killjoy]

Storm in a sewer.

[Narrator (Horror Story Voice)]

That was dumb.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Do not follow my example.

[Johnny Knoxville]

Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Ed Helms]

Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu Every single episode.

[Co-host or Guest on Snafu]

32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop What?

[Ed Helms]

It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Margaret Killjoy]

Hi.

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[Margaret Killjoy]

Business is booming.

[Co-host or Guest on Snafu]

That's why I'm working on a Saturday.

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