Scared Sick: How Horror Helped Me Face My Body

This week on Horror Heals, we’re joined by debut horror author Grace Daly, who once called herself “a coward to the core.” Jump scares? No thanks. Gore? Absolutely not. But everything changed when Grace's chronic illness forced her to confront a very real kind of body horror—one she couldn't turn off, mute, or escape.

In this powerful and unflinchingly honest episode, Grace shares how her diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome cracked open a terrifying but oddly comforting door into the horror genre. We talk about finding catharsis in blood and guts, the comfort of monsters when your body feels like the enemy, and why disabled voices are crucial in horror storytelling.

We also dive into:

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• The surprising role of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil in her healing
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• Why horror comedy makes brutal truths easier to face
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• Menstrual blood, dismembered limbs, and other “normal” things
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• Her upcoming debut novel The Scald Crow and the joy of haunting the Midwest
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• And yes—how being a full-size candy bar house is a sacred Halloween duty 🎃
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Grace proves you don’t have to be fearless to face the dark—you just have to be ready.

📚 Guest: Grace Daly

Grace is a former IT project manager turned horror writer who lives with multiple chronic invisible illnesses. Her debut novel The Scald Crow drops this October and blends Irish folklore, body horror, and razor-sharp humor with unflinching honesty about disability and identity.

💬 “My body is a horror show. So I figured—I might as well write one.”

Thank you for listening to Horror Heals. 

Share the show with someone who loves horror and someone who needs a little healing.

If you want to support our guests, check the show notes for links to their work, conventions, and fundraising pages.

You can also listen to our sister podcast Family Twist, a show about DNA surprises, identity, and the families we find along the way.

Horror Heals is produced by How the Cow Ate the Cabbage LLC.

Is horror good for mental wellness? Of corpse it is.

Transcript

Crypt Keeper cold open, horror heals tagline, instant vibe

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hello Boils and Goons. It's your old pal, John Casheer, the voice of the Cripkeeper. And I want to welcome my good fiends of the Horror Heels podcast. Is horror good for mental wellness? But of course it is! I delight in the delicious deaths of pitiful people on the silver screen. So get ready for a hell of a good time with my new fiends, Corey and Kendall, on the Horror Heels Podcast.

Launch on Friday the 13th, meet Adrienne King, Alice the original final person

SPEAKER_03 1:00

Welcome back, Horror Heliacs! Today's Horror Heels episode is about to take a turn into the beautifully bizarre. I'm your co-host, Corey, and Kendall and I are welcoming the delightfully unhinged Grace Daly, who describes herself as a cowardly horror wrecker. But let me tell you, Grace slices into the blood-soaked abyss of chronic illness, body horror, and banshee folklore with the grace of, well, someone named Grace. If you've ever said ouch and ew at the same time, this episode's for you. Grace, welcome to the Horror Heels Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Hi, thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_03 1:37

Absolutely. Now, just real quickly, before we get into your story, just because I thought this was like a little funny sidebar, but we've been in contact via email, and the publisher that you're working with, we were reached out to by the publicist as well. And his name is Will. And your name is Grace.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

No, neither of us had noticed that. And when you pointed it out, it was like it was a real like head desk moment of I was like, oh yeah, it's right there. It's right there. He doesn't even go by like Bill or William. Like it's it's legitimately Will and Grace.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

We'll see how many other people catch that one.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Right, exactly. So one thing that really intrigued me by the email you sent to us initially was that you haven't always been a horror fan. In fact, you're kind of like really shied away from it until your disability. Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

For sure. On all my social media, I have a little tag that says easily frightened horror writer or something to that effect. Because I am deeply and truly in my soul a coward, especially when it comes to like horror, like fiction. It's weirdly like in real life in a crisis, I do okay, and I'm not that much of a coward. But I remember like even into my young adulthood, like being like 21 and 22, and like someone turning on Cabin in the Woods at a party, and Cabin in the Woods like isn't even that gory or that intense as far as horror movies go. And there's like the scene where like the zombie redneck torture guy like drives a hook or a rake or whatever it is into like the blonde woman's back and she's like screaming. And I just remember like freaking out, needing to leave the room, like crying in the bathroom from like how upset.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

So, like, yeah, I am uh I am a proper coward, but my disabilities, I have chronic invisible illnesses, and a lot of them stem from this one genetic disease, Ayler Stanlow syndrome, which I have had my whole life, but my symptoms only really got severe like once I got into like my mid-20s. And I remember when my symptoms started getting severe, and I was so upset in so much pain all the time. I couldn't figure out what was going on. All these doctors were telling me that I was fine because it's a rare disease, so it took a long time for me to get diagnosed. And I was in all this emotional turmoil, and I always had turned to fiction, to books and things like that to guide me. And I kept reading all of my uplifting, beautiful, artistic, literary stories, and I just wasn't finding anything that I could connect with, and I kept being like, man, none of these people get what's happening to me. Like, I need something that really digs into the meat of like upset and trauma, and oh, I know what genre I'm looking for. It became very obvious all of a sudden. And so after I like had this extended, like traumatic, really painful experience that's like still continuing with my disability, suddenly I found all of this comfort in horror that I previously never found before. And I still, I still cover my eyes a lot. I peek through my fingers, I especially if it's like a movie and not a book, I am viscerally curled in a ball, I'm cringing, I'm moving, but like I get a lot out of it now, and I find it very grounding and comforting rather than upsetting the way I did a decade ago.

Adrienne King on horror community as safe, healing space, “we heal each other”

SPEAKER_03 5:38

Were there a couple of pieces of fiction that you found that you were like, ah, okay, alright, this is we're getting onto this now?

Adrienne shares stalker PTSD, first convention, realizing she wasn’t alone

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, that's a really good question. So I think that at first I was kind of dipping my toe into like horror light. I remember watching Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth for the first time, and really having this experience of like, oh, like he gets it. He understands like this darkness. And I know that Pan's Labyrinth isn't like super peak spooky horror, but that one really was an introduction for me. Also, my debut novel is a horror comedy. I love horror comedy, and so I eased in with horror comedies. Tucker and Dale versus Evil was the first horror movie I loved. And it's still, I still quote it as my favorite horror movie to this day, because with that comedy angle, it like kind of diluted it enough that I could like still enjoy it as a coward, but like still get that incredible emotional release and that feeling of connection and things like that. So those are the ones that at first really stuck out to me. But then as I've gotten more and more into horror, this is more getting into books, but Baby Teeth by Zoya Stage has some really incredible disabled invisible illness rep in it, and I just devoured that one. I've read that one probably three or four times because I relate really deeply to the main character, Suzette, and her struggles with Crohn's. And so that's a big one for me. This one isn't disability rep, but Victor Laval's The Changeling also really impacted me. Just though the way that one of the main characters was so convinced that like the baby had been replaced with a changeling, that trapped feeling of not being believed was something that I really related to from like my medical trauma and from not being able to get a diagnosis for so long.

SPEAKER_03 7:49

How do you find yourself relating to body horror as well as invisible diagnoses horror?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Oh yeah. Body horror is like my meat and potatoes for sure. One of my like phrases that I come back to over and over again is I like to say that my body is a horror show. Because my experience with disability involves a lot of chronic pain. It involves very painful, very sudden, and very embarrassing bowel issues. It involves very intense like temperature intolerance, a tendency towards fainting, my joints dislocate very easily. It's this constant feeling of insecurity and pain and d's and discomfort. And so I always feel like I'm living a body horror, and then I just have to go get dressed and go to the grocery store. You still have to do everything else that everyone else is doing, and you have to pretend like it's normal. So I'm constantly living this feeling of being in a body horror as I'm just going about my day-to-day life. And that's really one of the things that I love about horror so much is that as I go through my day-to-day life, it feels very much like I have to minimize my disability and act like I'm not disabled to be polite. Because it it feels impolite or rude or obnoxious somehow to show people that you're in pain or to talk about your explosive diarrhea. It's not polite. But in horror, there's no need to paper over that. There's no need to use euphemisms like the grosser the better, especially when it comes to body horror. And so it's this incredible, incredible space where I just get to be honest about the body horror, horror show that is my body.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, it gives me a lot of agency and a lot of control when I otherwise kind of feel like I'm spinning out.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

Right, right. Well, we love when things sort of line up for us. So you mentioned before we started recording that you're from Chicago, and A, I'm a little disappointed you haven't started cursing yet since you warned us you might, but it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

I'm trying very hard.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

So I'm originally from St. Louis. Kendall's from Arkansas, but we we met in St. Louis and we love Chicago. And love that, and and obviously we haven't read the book yet, but just that you're tying in the Midwest to some Irish folklore stuff because as if Kendall and I have d um done our DNA testing, Ireland is very, very strong in his his ancestry, and and when he visited there, like it was one of his uh favorite places that he's ever been. I didn't exactly know why, but you know, this is obviously why it's it's his homeland.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Oh yeah, for sure. So one thing I love about visiting Ireland um is that when I'm in the US, when I'm in the Midwest, I don't believe in the Fae. I don't believe in banshees, I don't really believe in any of it. Like it's it's all fiction. When I've been in Ireland, you kind of believe it. It feels more real, it feels very close to the surface. One time when I was in Ireland, I accidentally wandered into a fairy circle. I was walking through Killarney National Park and I stumbled into a fairy circle. I didn't realize that I was stepping into a fairy circle. As soon as I stepped into it, I noticed that there was this perfect ring, huge, maybe like 25 feet across, with no trees in it, except for one at the very far end that was bent over to form what looked like to me like an altar. And I was like, oh shit. Like, am I gonna step out of this? And will 300 years have passed and will everyone I know be dead? Like, is that what's gonna happen to me? And I thought it was so cool. And I pulled out my phone to take a panoramic. I stood in the center and I wanted to take a panoramic photo. And so I started to spin in a circle and take the panoramic photo. I made it about 30% of the way, and my phone just turned off by itself. I left the very circle, and I was truly afraid until I like reached like the main town. I was truly afraid that I was gonna like walk back on and like there wasn't gonna be a road. Like I was truly frightened until I made it back to society. And that's what I love about Ireland is that I've never had that feeling in the United States, that feeling of like, oh shit. I've fucked up. There's the swearing. And in Ireland, I was like, oh no, I have angered something through my hubris.

Adrienne King’s full-circle purpose, “I’m your support system,” horror as lifeline

SPEAKER_03 12:45

Oh, I love that. Well, I appreciate that your debut novel is the mix of humor and horror. I think that's a really interesting and safer sort of gateway for people to get into the genres. And so how much grace is in the book and how much humor is in the book, and how dark does it get?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah, so there's an awful lot of grace in the book. Breeze is the main character. I shouldn't just casually talk about her as if she's a real person. She's not. A lot of Breege's struggles with her own undiagnosed, like chronic invisible illness. She and I don't have the exact same diagnoses. She has, I've got a lot of diseases, um, and she's got one of my five. A lot of her struggles with her chronic invisible illness and a lot of her like emotional beats are very, very similar to the emotional beats that I went through when I was going through like not being able to get a diagnosis and feeling like not believed, feeling like I was just gonna suffer forever, feeling like it was all in my head, that it was just like this anxiety that was out of control, and that I was inventing it. So there is an awful lot of me in her emotional turmoil. She is a bit more passive than I am. I think that I'm a little bit more of like a cage matcher, and Breege is a little bit more sedate, a little bit more shy, a little bit more introverted, whereas I'm really bold and brash. But there are a lot of personality characteristics that Breeze and I share. A number of my friends who know me in person have said that when they're reading the book, they can hear me reading it because the way that I write is so similar to the way that I talk, especially like a five milligram edible in, and like Breeze talks like I talk when I'm really vibing. So there is an awful lot of me in it. And the comedy angle is really strong. A lot of the comedy comes from it's told first person present perspective. So Breeze is kind of giving this running commentary on everything that happens as it happens. And a lot of the comedy comes from Breege's very dry, very Midwestern, like a little bit like sassy, Barbie, rude, but like ultimately well-intentioned commentary on everything that's going on. The cops come to investigate part of the haunting. And she looks at the cops, and like there's like an older cop there, that's these two white cops in this suburban Chicagoland town, and one of them's got like the big beer gut that you kind of see on these white suburban cops, and then the other one's like a young guy who's like real thin with this long neck, and she's sitting there and she's like, the older cop looks like every man you've ever seen at a Buffalo Wild Wings. The younger cop, I wonder if with time he will evolve into Buffalo Wild Wings or if he will stay in his current form. And so it's just this constant, sassy, witty silliness that's just like bubbling through. But the actual horror is pretty intense. There's a lot of body horror. There's one scene that is like directly related on my lived experiences that involves like a lot, a lot, a lot of menstrual blood, and it is real gross. And someone was talking to me about it, and they were like, Yeah, I was surprised that you would write splatterpunk, which was wild to me, because I don't think of myself as a very gory writer. I don't think of myself as splatterpunk. And like this scene was like something that I've lived like 15, 16 times, like when I've had flares to the reader, than I thought it was when I was writing. But there's also lots of dismembered body parts that she keeps finding throughout the house. There's lots of uncanny valley spookiness. I hate the uncanny valley, so there's a lot of that. I would say it's worse than Tucker and Dale versus Evil in terms of spook factor, gore factor, creep factor, but it's nowhere near like a terrifier.

SPEAKER_03 16:57

Okay, alright.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

We might be in like the maybe we're in like kind of like the hereditary midsomer zone, but as a comedy.

unknown 17:08

Alright.

SPEAKER_03 17:09

So I'm all for that. Yeah. Well, and you just mentioned two flicks that very, very different movies, same filmmaker, but stick with you. And I and not just because of the blood being sticky, but I imagine that your story is gonna stick with people.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

I really hope so. One of the things that's really important to me when I'm writing is the realness of the characters and that ability for the reader to emotionally connect with the characters. And that was something that I worked very hard on because I believe that makes it sticky, you know, when you really feel that connection with the character. And that's one of the reasons why it's told in first person and why it's told in present tense, because I wanted it to feel immediate and real, and I wanted you to feel like you were talking to Breege and like she was your friend who was telling you about all this nightmare bullshit that was going on. I really hope that people connect with her and connect with the story on that deeper emotional level.

SPEAKER_03 18:11

Sure. When you were determining who you wanted to read the book for feedback, etc., did you give anybody the heads up or there are folks who are like known you as cowardly grace, it's not gonna watch a horror movie, or how did you go about choosing who got to read the book?

SPEAKER_00 18:26

So honestly, it was a combination of my friends and anybody who was willing to. Before I became a disabled, I was an IT project manager. So it's not like I had these great artistic literary connections. I didn't really have any plug-ins to the world. And so when I was writing The Scald Crow, my friends who love me were willing to read it because they love me, and I probably could have thrown up on a piece of paper and asked them to read it, and they would have done it because they're nice people. So that was what have that was one of the main criteria of willingness. Otherwise, there were a couple of very generous, more established writers who I met through Twitter before that, all imploded, or other social media who very generously offered to read like short pieces that I had written and give me feedback. Those people were so, so generous and kind for doing that because their feedback convinced me that I actually could write a book and that there was value in this story, and that I was doing something new and different and valuable. So, yeah, the main criteria was are you willing to read?

SPEAKER_03 19:45

Alright.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:47

So the book is coming out in October, which is Halloween season. Has your feelings about Halloween changed since you've gotten more into horror and what was Halloween like for young Grace?

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Oh, a hundred percent. So I always loved Halloween. This was a weird thing for me. I was always a coward, but I always liked things that were like spooky, like cute spooky. So, like, I always loved Nightmare Before Christmas. When Over the Garden Wall came out, I was feral for Over the Garden Wall. So I was one of those like invader Zim hot topic kids. So I loved Halloween when I was younger, but my costumes would either not be scary or they would be like a very mildly scary twist on something. I like remember like one year I did Little Bo creep and it was like a zombie little bow peep. And then another year I did Little Dead Riding Hood, which was like zombie little red riding hood. So I would do like cutesy things like that. And so like I loved Halloween, but wouldn't actually do haunted houses. I just did like the cute spooky thing. But as I've gotten more into horror, I'm more like, yeah, rock and roll. Hell yeah, brother, Halloween. And so now every year I make like a long list of horror movies because since I was a coward for so long, like I've missed out on a lot of classics. Like a lot of classics. I only saw Nightmare on Elm Street like last year. So I'm like catching up. I got a lot of ground to cover. So every year I make like a list of horror movies to watch. And when I first started getting into horror, it would be like a list of like five or ten. And I'd watch them in the two weeks leading up to Halloween. And then like slowly the list got to be like 20, and then it would be like, okay, the month of October. And now it's like September 1st. And I'm like, all right, bitches, it is spooky season. Like, I got my skeleton hoodie. I got a pumpkin hat. We are head to toe, orange and black. I'm really into it now. You know. Right. So now, as soon as there's even the slightest chill in the air, I am just hitting the ground, running for Halloween. It's my absolute favorite now. I am a full-size candy bar house.

unknown 22:08

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

So yeah, the kids know.

SPEAKER_03 22:14

Yes, we have a very popular trick-or-treat neighborhood for sure.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Yeah, yeah. My street's a really popular one because I'm not technically in Chicago. I'm outside the city in like a pretty safe neighborhood. So not only do we get the neighborhood kids, but we also get a lot of kids who live in areas that aren't so good for trick-or-treating, they'll come out to our neighborhood. I love it. I absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_03 22:35

Yeah, we do too. But it's always Halloween season, though, in our Yeah. It's and we find ways to just kind of mix it in with the other holidays too. Like, oh, is there a there's a couple Easter horror movies, right, that we can watch during Easter time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

I do always watch the yeah, if there's a holiday horror movie, I'll watch it. I would argue Velocipaster as an Easter horror movie.

SPEAKER_03 22:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

I would argue it.

SPEAKER_03 23:00

I don't think we watched it around Easter, but yeah, I mean it's not art. Um it's not a high art.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

It's not high art. Yeah, that's fine. It's art. It's not high art.

SPEAKER_03 23:16

So with that being said, in your love of Halloween, like what what does the launch look like for you since the book is going to be coming out during that season?

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Yeah, so I am actually a little scared about my standing as a full-size candy bar house, because I really want to make sure that I'm here to give out those full-size candy bars. And I don't want to refuse doing a Halloween event because I should do Halloween events. I'm a horror writer. But on the other hand, man, like I really gotta be giving out those full-size candy bars. Like I have a reputation to uphold. But otherwise, we are, I am planning like a small book tour. It's going to mostly be in the Midwest. There will probably be one trip to New York, or I'm hoping for one trip to New York. There is a horror-exclusive bookstore opening in New York called The Twisted Spine. It's going to be opening in Brooklyn. And so I'm really hoping to be able to do an event with them. We're still kind of working on scheduling that. And then otherwise, I'm planning on doing a probably multiple events in Chicago since I'm located here. I'm going to be doing an event in Cleveland. Max Fax, which is a bookstore in Cleveland, has offered to host me. I'm planning on doing some events in Champagne Urbana, which is down south in Illinois. I went to University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne, so I've got some connections down there. There's the Spooky Frog Horror Fest, which is October 18th, right outside Milwaukee. And I will be at the Spooky Frog Horror Fest. I'm also hoping to hit Madison. I have a brother who lives up in Madison, so I'm planning on doing an event in Madison in late October. And then Patrick Barb, who's a horror writer who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, kind of near Minneapolis, is going to be doing some events with me in St. Paul or Minneapolis area as well. And then if you live in the middle of absolutely nowhere, Illinois, just outside Rockford in Rocton, Illinois, my best friend's sister owns a bookstore, Inkwell Books and Threads. It is kind of middle of nowhere, but she's going to be hosting me for an event as well. And I'll be driving out there because I want to visit my best friend. So why not?

SPEAKER_03 25:29

No, it sounds like uh you got a lot of things already cooking, which is great.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun, and I'm really excited to actually be able to talk to people like face to face about not only horror and horror comedy, but also about disability and invisible illness. Because there's not nearly enough conversation about that, and roughly 20% of Americans are disabled. So it's a big group of people.

SPEAKER_03 25:54

If you're looking for a potential like St. Louis area, let us know and we can definitely definitely put some feelers out.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

It fits in my Midwest vibe. I love the Midwest. I am a Midwest stan. So yeah, a St. Louis stock would be perfect. I will definitely follow up on that.

SPEAKER_03 26:11

For sure. Absolutely. Chicago Midwest has got some great conventions. We have some great horror conventions here on the East Coast as well. Have you braved a horror convention yet?

SPEAKER_00 26:22

I have not braved a horror convention yet. Spooky Frog is gonna be my first. I am gonna be at Fan Expo in August. That's before the book comes out, but that's like a normal like nerd convention. And I will say that, like, as you might have implied from like my joke about being an Invader Zim kid, I am like a proper big ol' nerd. I got a big nightcrawler tattoo right here on my bicep. So I'm a proper big old nerd, and I've been to cons before. I used to cosplay a lot as Harley Quinn and Princess Peach. So cons aren't new to me, and I'm a big Renfair person. I go to Renaissance fairs every year, so Renaissance fairs are like a very familiar stomping ground for me. And so I'm hoping that I'll do okay at the horror cons because it's it's Ren Fares, I love them. I love them to death. They're weird, they're real weird, and so I can't imagine a horror convention being much weirder.

SPEAKER_03 27:29

The surprising thing about it is that they're not as weird, and there's definitely and we've been to run fairs, we've been to I've been to Comic Cons ever since I was a kid. There is a different vibe at the horror cons, and it's a great vibe, it's a very welcoming vibe. Some people just they don't want to see scary costumes and stuff like that. They can't handle. Like I can't show some of my coworkers just like photos of stuff we have in our house, like creepy dots and stuff. But you get over it really, really quickly at a horror con, I think, just because of the good vibes that carry through the entire place.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

Yeah, so actually there's a running joke. I've had this conversation with my mom six or seven times now, and she'll go, I just don't understand why you can't write nice things. You read nice books sometimes. Why don't you write a nice book? You could write romance. And I go, Mom, romance fans are mean. Horror fans are nice. Horror fans are very nice.

SPEAKER_03 28:27

And fiercely loyal.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Yes, and fiercely loyal.

SPEAKER_03 28:31

Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to reading it. I can just tell from your personality that it's gonna be a good ride. And the final question that we ask all of our guests on horror heels is who is your favorite final person in a horror movie, the survivor?

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Ooh, okay. So I have listened to the podcast before, so I thought about this very deeply. I have a question of my own to counter with, which is do we count Guillermo del Toro's Shape of Water as horror or as dark fantasy?

SPEAKER_03 29:05

I think it crosses over for sure.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

If we're counting Shape of Water, I am going to say Eliza from Shape of Water. She's disabled, she she can't speak, and she uses sign language to communicate. She's a really, really well-rounded character. She's got an incredible amount of agency. Guillermo del Toro is my boy. I love Doug Jones as the amphibious man. I love that like mishmash of like romance and horror. And I know that like she gets shot at the end of the movie, she falls into the water. Like, ooh, like, does she actually survive? Is she actually a final girl? And obviously, yes. We are shown clearly that the fishman has magical healing powers. He's in love with her. Obviously, he healed her. She grew some gills, and they're living happily together in the water. Forever. Done.

SPEAKER_03 30:02

There you go. I'm right there with you. And hopefully, they occasionally get together with Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah from Splash since the guy got a similar ending. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. No, that's a that's a great pick. What a wonderful movie. And Octavia Spencer is so great in that. Yeah. It's a fantastic movie. We have a double-sided, like full 27 by 40 inch poster that Doug Jones signed to us that we need to find a spot to display.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Doug Jones signed it?

SPEAKER_03 30:33

Yes. I have a lovely photo of he and I together. I'll send to you. But um what a sweet, gentle soul and amazing performer. And one of these years he's gonna get an Oscar nomination, even if he's under prosthetics and doesn't speak. It's deserved.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

He's so communicative, like with his body language in such a beautiful, beautiful way. He's such a beautiful performer.

SPEAKER_03 30:56

Yeah, you you mentioned Pan's Labyrinth and that the creature with the eyes and the hands, like that's so unsettling.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Yes. So unsettling, so evocative. It's very every frame of painting.

SPEAKER_03 31:10

So yeah, I'm very excited to see what Guillermo does with Frankenstein. It's just everything he does is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

I'm so ready.

SPEAKER_03 31:19

Yeah. As I mentioned, I'm a nerd too, and just going back to like con years and years ago, some friends and I went to DragonCon in Atlanta. This I guess it was maybe early 2000s. Guillermo was speaking after a screening, and that was awesome. And this was very early days. Very early days. This was, I think it was species that he was there for. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

That's so cool. That's really awesome. If you I don't know if you've ever heard of the artist Toma Iho.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Then it sounds familiar.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Yeah, he made a whole tarot deck based on Guillermo del Toro's art. And it's phenomenal. I can't recommend Thomas Tomas Iho's art enough.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

That's very cool. That might be a good gift for Samantha's 17th birthday, Kendall. She's our niece who is getting into horror like she's a huge Pearl fan.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

I have a nephew who's really big into horror, who actually I got him into Guillermo del Toro.

SPEAKER_03 32:13

Good for you. That's a good aunt.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah, you gotta get him young. Nobody got me young, and so there was a delay. See, there you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:21

You're catching up, yeah. But then I was like, you get to be pleasantly surprised by stuff from the 70s and 80s and 90s. You know that's awesome. Well, this has been a joy. We'll definitely be in touch because we're gonna get this episode out quickly, but we'll want to revisit around October with clips and things like that to let people know. And once you get a finalized schedule and everything, we'll share that as well.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Oh, wonderful!

SPEAKER_03 32:42

Of course. Thank you. Alright, horror fam, Grace Daley gave us invisible illness realness, menstrual mayhem, and enough Midwest sass to haunt a Buffalo Wild Wings. Whether your team peeked through your fingers or full on face melting gore, this episode proves what we always say. Is horror good for mental wellness? Of course it is. The Horror Heals podcast is produced and presented by How the Cow Ate the Cabbage LLC.