Lunatics Radio Hour

Episode 140 - Horror on The High Seas: Paranormal Geography

• The Lunatics Project • Season 1 • Episode 178

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Abby and Alan kick off their mega series on ocean themed horror with The Bermuda Triangle, The Mariana Trench and Atlantis. Haunted ocean geography if you will.

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Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.

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Speaker 1:

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour podcast. I'm Abby Brinker sitting here with alan kudan hello and today we are talking about the history of horror on the high seas what's a pirate's favorite letter r?

Speaker 2:

you'd think that would it be the sea that was a good accent.

Speaker 1:

He sounded a lot like what's his name the old pirate from pirates of the Caribbean.

Speaker 2:

Captain Barbossa.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's your Barbossa voice. So, from ghost ships and mermaids to the lost city of Atlantis, there are almost an unending amount of legends of terror from the ocean's watery depth. Our summer series for the next few months will explore all of this and more. And so what does horror on the high seas include, you might ask.

Speaker 2:

I have no idea.

Speaker 1:

Most of what we're going to discuss can be defined as maritime folklore and mythology. However, if it is at all adjacent to the ocean not a lake, not a river, but the ocean and it's creepy it'll probably come up.

Speaker 2:

So I've been doing a lot of independent research for this episode.

Speaker 1:

Which always makes me a little nervous.

Speaker 2:

And I've come to a conclusion.

Speaker 1:

Okay, here we go.

Speaker 2:

The reason that the ocean is such a horror trope is that you can't breathe it. There's lots of times when everything would be fine, except for that one thing.

Speaker 1:

What? What do you mean? Everything would be fine.

Speaker 2:

Like that is. The scary thing is you just can't breathe water.

Speaker 1:

But what makes it different from lake horror or river horror?

Speaker 2:

Because usually you're always by land, I mean, I guess the middle, you can sure, the middle of the Great Lakes. It's pretty far from shore but there's not many middle of the Great Lake horror movies.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I also my two cents about this is that there's so much rich history with oceans right, like rooted in reality. You have pirates, you have Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, all of these things that we're going to discuss in this series, and so that's also what makes it really interesting. Right, there's been a lot of traumatic and real history and events that have happened that have set the scene for a horror trope here.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm really excited to like find out more mythological stuff, because all of the movies and stories and whatnot that I've been reading for this come down to one of two things that make the water scary.

Speaker 1:

You can't breathe it.

Speaker 2:

Can't breathe it and sharks, that's it.

Speaker 1:

Oh, there's way more than that.

Speaker 2:

I'm sure there are, but those are the things that I keep running into.

Speaker 1:

Sure, we're going to talk about sharks a a lot. Don't worry, I I didn't specifically research drowning, but I I think it'll come up really yeah, I mean this isn't like a true crime podcast. You know I'm not gonna be like there's, not like a lot of films or things where people just drown. Like there's, it's a byproduct of another thing disagree it's a byproduct of something else that happened, like the titanic. A bunch of people drowned.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

But they didn't just like go out and drown on their own.

Speaker 2:

What, what, does that mean?

Speaker 1:

You're saying that the fact that people can't breathe is the reason there's a trope. Yes, I'm saying the fact that ships wreck is the reason that there's a trope, and people drowning or dying is a symptom of this other thing. The ship didn't wreck because people couldn't breathe. It was the other way around.

Speaker 2:

Okay, Well, a great example, and we'll get to it once we start talking movies. But the entire open water franchise, all three movies have to do with you're just in the water and you can't get out of the water.

Speaker 1:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

So you're going to drown and it's spooky.

Speaker 1:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

Yep water and you can't get out of the water. Yep, so you're gonna drown and it's spooky. Yep, yep the. The idea of an impending doom via drowning is that that's.

Speaker 1:

That's where the horror comes I mean, that's a good example of what you're talking about, but sharks are also involved in other factors in that series as right they. Yeah, it ramps it up yeah, so sometimes alan, not always if you had to guess how many ships are wrecked at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Speaker 2:

How many shipwrecks are like to date?

Speaker 1:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

That's. I mean, how does one even calculate that? How did you get a statistic? Where does your statistic come from? This is important.

Speaker 1:

From the Smithsonian Ocean Institute.

Speaker 2:

Is this just like officially licensed vessels, or does this also encapsulate people that maybe got a little too ambitious in a canoe?

Speaker 1:

It's not canoe, it's shipwrecks.

Speaker 2:

What's the difference between a boat and a ship?

Speaker 1:

So obviously there's a bit of a size requirement for it to be a ship. Usually it has multiple sails, multiple engines. It's a bit larger. I'm not talking about like motorboats, right, I'm talking about ships, shipwrecks.

Speaker 2:

But this can go all the way back to ancient times.

Speaker 1:

And it does.

Speaker 2:

Because you can have the Viking rowing ships.

Speaker 1:

And we do.

Speaker 2:

And there's not multiple sails. There Are there. Do they have sails or just rowing? I don't know.

Speaker 1:

It sails.

Speaker 2:

Well, okay, just I guess you're not not gonna have a really informed guess either way, so I'm not sure why we're splitting hairs. I'm gonna say six to seven hundred, six to seven hundred that's your best guess higher or lower. Three million.

Speaker 1:

Three million. Yeah, who put them there? Humans, disasters, oceans, storms.

Speaker 2:

Three million and that doesn't include canoes it does not include canoes if you include canoes we'll have to submit an inquiry. That's got to be a lot higher Ocean.

Speaker 1:

Institute. Yeah, All right, let's get into it. Let's talk about our sources for today, now that we've been teased with what's to come.

Speaker 2:

That was a great conversation.

Speaker 1:

So we have an NPR article by Andy Bowers we found the lost city of Atlantis again A History article by the site's editors bermudatriangle historycom article on atlantis and I also link all this in the description of the podcast with the links. An article from naval history and heritage command the loss of flight 19. A discovermagazinecom article by tree mensch how deep is the mariana trench and what have we discovered in its depths? In ours? Technica article by nate anderson release the kraken 2000 years of tall tales and a smattering of truth. A 2009 Historycom article on the Titanic. An article from TheCollectorcom Five of the most famous shipwrecks from the ancient world. A New Zealand Maritime Museum article Top 20 sailing superstitions. And a big thank you to April Branker for research help, as always.

Speaker 2:

Top 20 sailing superstitions.

Speaker 1:

Just wait, it's coming.

Speaker 2:

You'll never believe number five.

Speaker 1:

So that was a BuzzFeed joke. Yeah, I got it, that was good.

Speaker 2:

For all you Gen Zers out there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, before your time, before TikTok, we had BuzzFeed. You have to go to BuzzFeedcom, just refresh it.

Speaker 2:

Looking for new content. Oh wow, sad it was a dark time for abby.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so we are going to kick things off with one of my favorite and the most, one of the most paranormal topics that we're going to discuss in the series sharks the bermuda triangle. Okay, are you already gonna hit me with opposition to the very first thing I'm going to say?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay. So the Bermuda Triangle it has some geographic features that make navigation tricky. Compasses go kind of wild there, swells go in weird directions, all that crap.

Speaker 1:

Yes, why don't we get into it and we'll see what we find there.

Speaker 2:

No, I'll just keep saying things and you say true or false.

Speaker 1:

At 25 degrees north and 71 degrees west, you will find the bermuda triangle, also known as the devil's triangle, and I do just want to say that I have snorkeled, wow abby, you daredevil I like to look fear in the eyes and stare him down.

Speaker 2:

Okay, is that why you have that shirt saying I survived snorkeling in the Bermuda Triangle?

Speaker 1:

I wish so we can credit journalist Edward Von Winkle Jones as being the first person to collect the lore and disappearances around this area and create the Bermuda Triangle urban legend with his 1950 article published in the Miami Herald. The article included a map that outlined the disappearances around Bermuda visually. As of today, there are about 11 aircraft incidents and 14 boat incidents.

Speaker 2:

That's it. Last I heard there were millions of shipwrecks. This is Edward Von Winkle Jones. There he is. He died in 1993.

Speaker 1:

We'll post a picture. He looks a little old-timey for his day. Are you sure you're looking at the most modern? That could be a common name.

Speaker 2:

That's a common name. Yeah, he's in kindergarten, he's all. That was the popular name. All the Von Winkle Joneses running around he was a time traveler from the Bermuda Triangle.

Speaker 1:

So after Jones's article was initially published in the Miami Herald, right, it was syndicated broadly by other newspapers. So other newspapers picked it up and ran it, which kind of spread this hypothesis like wildfire. Soon other coverage joined the ranks, including an article in the long running paranormal magazine Fate, written by George X Sand. And Fate magazine is a little passion of mine. I have a few of them. It's the longest running paranormal magazine. They have covered over the years the craziest topics. It's just a really fun. If you ever see it at a thrift store, grab it. They're so fun to read.

Speaker 2:

I assume it's out of print.

Speaker 1:

No, it's still running, but there's like ones you can find from all decades, like so long.

Speaker 2:

When did it start?

Speaker 1:

It was founded in 1948.

Speaker 2:

1948. Okay, so by then Mr Von Winkle Jones was already very established as a reporter.

Speaker 1:

Right, but this was the article that appeared in Fate magazine came after Jones's article. It was written by George X Sand. In 1964, vincent Gaddis finally coined the term Bermuda Triangle in a third magazine article. There's much criticism of the theory of the Bermuda Triangle, but even still there are unexplained disappearances that cannot be accounted for. Quoting from the Historycom article quote when Christopher Columbus sailed through the area on his first voyage to the New World, he reported that a great flame of fire, probably a meteor, crashed into the sea one night and that a strange light appeared in the distance a few weeks later. He also wrote about erratic compass readings, perhaps because at that time a sliver of the Bermuda Triangle was one of the few places on Earth where True North and Magnetic North lined up. End quote.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I googled. True north is the direction towards the Earth's geographic north pole, which is a fixed point on the globe. Magnetic north is the direction that a compass needle points as it aligns with the Earth's magnetic field, which is not uniform and shifts over time.

Speaker 1:

Where are you reading from?

Speaker 2:

Nothing, because this is just AI. Now you just type into Google and it just tells you things, because it's a robot.

Speaker 1:

But what does that mean? Why would it impact compasses?

Speaker 2:

So it's always pointing towards magnetic north right, Because that's literally what a compass does.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I'm assuming that's just like a roving point towards the top of the globe. You know it's generally in the same spot but still kind of shifts around. But why true north, andetic North? Lining up would be a problem, I can't say.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so you had the same amount of information that I had.

Speaker 2:

But now we know the difference between True North and Magnetic North.

Speaker 1:

Now we know, in 1918, one of the worst incidents connected with the Devil's Triangle took place. The USS Cyclops, a US naval boat, was completely lost without a trace sometime around March 4th 1918. There were 306 souls on board, making the incident the largest loss of life outside of a combat situation in the history of the US Navy. And it remains a mystery to this day. There were known issues with the boat going into the voyage she was overloaded with manganese ore. Issues with the boat going into the voyage she was overloaded with manganese ore. The starboard engine had a cracked cylinder and could not be used, and so she had to stop unexpectedly in Barbados because the water level was too high. But all that being said, when the Cyclops was checked on in Rio, she was deemed fit and properly functioning.

Speaker 1:

The Cyclops set out for Baltimore on the 4th of March and never made it to her destination. Some aboard a molasses tanker called the Amulco claimed to see her on the 9th, but the captain of that ship vehemently denies that possibility and in all likelihood, logistically she could not have been spotted there, given the time frame. The disappearance was during World War I, so some believe that she could have been taken down by a German submarine or she could have sunk because she was over capacity with ore. The German authorities denied any involvement. The US officially claims it was most likely that she went down due to a storm. So that is not the earliest, but certainly one of the more prominent because of the number of people and because of the scale and the size of the ship and the fact that she's never been recovered.

Speaker 2:

I mean, is the Bermuda Triangle specifically? Is it really offshore, I imagine? I assume it's just totally open ocean.

Speaker 1:

So the best way to think about the Bermuda Triangle is that it is a triangle between Miami, bermuda and Puerto Rico.

Speaker 2:

Oh, so it is open ocean.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's a lot, that's huge, but it's sort of the triangle between these three points.

Speaker 2:

That's way bigger than I thought it was.

Speaker 1:

How big did you think it was?

Speaker 2:

I thought this was like 100 square miles or something.

Speaker 1:

And according to this Britannica article, it says that 50 ships and 20 airplanes are said to have mysteriously disappeared here, so the count is higher than what I said.

Speaker 2:

And billions of canoes.

Speaker 1:

That's right. Here's a picture of the Cyclops so you can see there it is. It's a big ship to be missing. I mean it doesn't look that big, 306 people on board.

Speaker 2:

How many people fit on a New York City subway train?

Speaker 1:

A car can fit about 200 people, so how many cars are in a train?

Speaker 2:

Okay, so it's about two subway cars.

Speaker 1:

But that's at full capacity subway cars 200 people on a single subway car?

Speaker 2:

That'd be miserable.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, wow, some are 150, but yeah.

Speaker 2:

Still, even if it's 100 people, that sucks, yeah. I wonder if we've experienced that and not even realized it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm sure I'm just thinking of that time when Hurricane Sandy hit and the L train which I lived off of didn't work for a year, so I had to take the J and everybody had to take the J because the L train didn't work. It got flooded. Then I think I took it twice and I was like I'm walking to work. It was the worst. I've been in a lot of crowded subway situations and this was really bad.

Speaker 2:

Yep, been there.

Speaker 1:

Perhaps one of the most startling aircraft disappearances associated with the bermuda triangle is the loss of flight 19. Around 2 pm on december 5th 1945, five tbm avenger torpedo bombers took off from the us naval air station in fort lauderdale, florida. This wasa fairly typical training flight, nothing out of the ordinary here.

Speaker 2:

What's a torpedo bomber?

Speaker 1:

It's a small sort of, you know, like when you watch movies like Top Gun. It's like that kind of a small, I think one or two person bomber, but it has torpedoes on it.

Speaker 2:

So it's a plane that launches with torpedoes. So it drops them into the water and they fire from there. I assume torpedoes are always for boats.

Speaker 1:

That's a question for a naval captain.

Speaker 2:

Unless they're photon torpedoes, because then you fight in space.

Speaker 1:

The weather was forecast to be calm, with maybe a few scattered showers. A few scattered showers. Lieutenant Charles C Taylor, an experienced pilot, led the training run successfully up until the second leg of the journey. Pilot led the training run successfully up until the second leg of the journey and I just want to reiterate how established and you know this was someone who was very, very seasoned as a pilot. So at this point, around 3.45pm, the station received communication from Taylor. He sounded confused and concerned. He kept repeating we cannot see the land, we seem to be off course. He kept repeating. After about 10 minutes of silence, another voice was heard on the radio not Taylor saying we can't find West, everything is wrong. We can't be sure of any direction, everything looks strange, even the ocean. 20 minutes later, one final transmission. Minutes later, one final transmission. We can't tell where we are. Everything is can't make out anything. We think we may be about 225 miles northeast of base. End quote. Followed by some mumbling until the final words it looks like we are entering white water. We're completely lost. End quote. Not only did the five planes disappear forever, but one of the two rescue crafts that were immediately launched was also lost, never to be found again. All in all, 27 men died, 14 pilots as part of flight 19, and 13 men on the rescue craft.

Speaker 1:

What is remarkable about this incident is that one, there were multiple planes involved. Right, so it wasn't just one person, it was six planes. Two, the conditions were supposed to be near perfect. Three, the crew was very experienced and capable. One leading theory is that the pilots ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean, but to me this doesn't explain the mysterious transmissions and long periods of silence.

Speaker 1:

So that remains sort of one of the more haunting, I suppose, incidents that have happened there. Simply because you have this experience that happens to six planes, not just one vessel or boat at the same time, with hundreds of hours of experience across these men, you have different pilots from different planes transmitting in very similar radio messages, and the conditions are meant to be perfect. Their experience they've done this run multiple times. Essentially, they sort of fly off the coast, they drop some test bombs and they fly back. They had made it through 60 of their mission and then suddenly something changed. They dispatch these rescue planes and the same thing happens to one of the planes. So it's, it's a very intriguing, I imagine, set of circumstances where, sure, there could have been some sort of freak storm, but that's never come up as like. There's been no evidence of any of those things.

Speaker 2:

What year is this?

Speaker 1:

1945.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so it was, you know, a while ago. I really wonder because, like you, don't hear too much about incidents and accidents recently in the Bermuda Triangle.

Speaker 1:

There's some modern ones, for sure. But I do think it's interesting because even if this pilot right, even if it was a storm, even if it was whatever this guy is so experienced, he's a lieutenant pilot Like he would know what a storm was. He would say oh my God, there's a storm. Like instead they're saying things like everything is white, we't see, we don't know where we are, like it's just the. The verbiage of these radio transmissions are so bizarre to me for somebody who's a very experienced pilot. Who would be, who would understand oh, there's a freak stormer, oh there's whatever yeah, these navy pilots are honestly, just most pilots in general.

Speaker 2:

The plane can be on fire, missing most of its its wings Right and been like, yeah, we're experiencing some trouble. We're trying to bring the aircraft to a safe landing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Not just like freaking the fuck out.

Speaker 1:

And for that to happen to all six planes you know.

Speaker 2:

I mean, it really does seem like there's some kind of geographic phenomena that causes old timey instruments I say old timey just like pre-gps uh to behave strangely yeah, but the other interesting thing too is like okay, so they can't see.

Speaker 1:

They, he says everything looks strange, even the water. So maybe there's some sort of you know some kind of like saying almost fire type thing where there's some kind of weird geographic phenomena, like what you're saying, that makes visually some kind of mist or something right. But they fly this course.

Speaker 2:

This was a typical training route for them oh, it was in die hard two uh-huh yes when they upload the the malfunction to the planes yeah that makes it so that, uh, that all the altimeters have faulty readings. That says the ground is much farther than it actually is well, that's scary yeah. So it's like that's, you know, the planes just couldn't land because everyone's so used to using instrumentation, right, that if you're trying to go off the tools that you are hardcore, trained on, and they're saying like, don't worry, the ground is, you know, 100 meters down and it's actually like right there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a problem, right Fascinating.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's why they dumped fire all over the runway, and so they made a landing strip.

Speaker 1:

Right In Die Hard 2.

Speaker 2:

That is correct In Die Hard 2.

Speaker 1:

Right In 1963, the USS Marine Sulphur Queen sank off the coast of Florida.

Speaker 2:

The US Marine Sulphur Queen.

Speaker 1:

That's right 39 people were killed. This incident is often quoted as a Bermuda Triangle sinking, but I wanted to include it to demonstrate that this is a fair and balanced podcast. In reality, the cause of this disaster is very well known and documented. The ship was not fit to sail, right, so everyone always says, okay, the USS Marine Sulphur Queen is listed in all of the Bermuda Triangle major lists of shipwrecks, but we know what happened to her, so I just wanted to include that there.

Speaker 2:

To save costs, they made the hull out of pasta.

Speaker 1:

Oh, Alan.

Speaker 2:

You know that shit happens Not out of ships, but they replaced concrete with ramen and stuff.

Speaker 1:

What and when For what?

Speaker 2:

Not concrete, but in lieu of like wood fill and whatnot and like cheap repairs.

Speaker 1:

They put in ramen. Yeah, like the block of ramen.

Speaker 2:

you can shave it to be basically like a chunk of wood and then, once you paint it, it looks the same. But it's not because it's pasta and not hardwood.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but seriously, it's not like rated for any kind of ocean going activity.

Speaker 1:

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I mean, if you put pasta in the ocean, it just gets wet. You know it's not, you can't float on it.

Speaker 2:

That's correct, Abby.

Speaker 1:

At least the water's pre-salted. You know Also just a fun fact that some believe that Shakespeare's work the Tempest is based on the idea of Bermuda Triangle disappearances.

Speaker 2:

Wait. So Shakespeare was worried about the Bermuda Triangle.

Speaker 1:

No one is above the fear of the Bermuda Triangle, except for me, because I stared it down and I went snorkeling.

Speaker 2:

Went snorkeling. I remember growing up and you're in elementary school, elementary.

Speaker 1:

Elementary Elementary.

Speaker 2:

My dear Watson elementary.

Speaker 1:

Elementary.

Speaker 2:

Yes, if you're British, you call it elementary school yes, you're from New York. Yeah, elementary versus elementary.

Speaker 1:

It's elementary school.

Speaker 2:

Elementary.

Speaker 1:

What did you say? Are you pranking me?

Speaker 2:

No, anyways, I was a you know, a wee lad, and the Bermuda Triangle was on the list of things you're going to have to look out for as an adult. It was right up there with like quicksand and tar pits.

Speaker 1:

I know I really was afraid of quicksand. I really thought quicksand was going to be more of a thing. Yeah, and algebra what I feel like all of middle school just like really prepared you for the use of math which, like, unless you're an architect, is irrelevant.

Speaker 2:

No, it's very profession specific of how often it comes into play.

Speaker 1:

But these things can come into play on an everyday basis. When's the last time you did algebra?

Speaker 2:

Anytime you're trying to build something.

Speaker 1:

When's the last time you used algebra?

Speaker 2:

I use it fairly often for ratios, when you just do the one thing over the other thing and then the A over the other thing and then just yeah, that you know you just do the one thing over the other thing, and then the A over the other thing and then you just yeah that you do that when we're trying to get a percentage of a ratio.

Speaker 1:

yes, For what reason? I actually use it quite a bit at work to calculate percentage change but turns out which they didn't tell you in eighth grade math. There is a percentage change calculator dot com, so I could just put in the percentages and it does it for me. I guess I'd never realized that you were such an algebra pro. It's not come up. Do you use scratch pads?

Speaker 2:

I wouldn't say that it comes up often, but it does come up. You know, mostly for just like. If you need to just like scale something up like a recipe, right, you know the ratio and then you know, like, what you're trying to make. You just do a little bit of algebra. What is very unused for me personally is the Pythagorean theorem. I just don't use it nearly as often as I thought I would.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a lot of elementary school was a lie.

Speaker 2:

But what they really really lied to us about and very similar to your fancy website uh-huh they said you're gonna have to memorize all these things because it's not like you're gonna be carrying around a calculator in your pocket, right, and like, yeah, I don't have my ti 89 or even my 84 in my pocket on a daily basis but you do have your phone I do have my phone, which is way better than that stupid overpriced calculator ever was you type boobs in it and hold it upside down no, you can't type boobs and you can you type 5 9 0 0, 9 and then hold it upside down and you create the boobs I see that's a good clarification.

Speaker 1:

Nobody under the age of 30 knows what we're talking about. Okay, from aliens, a supernatural portal in and Atlantis. There are many theories about why the Bermuda Triangle seems to be a hotbed of nautical paranormal activity, but according to the US Coast Guard, it isn't actually that special Quote. In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years, there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that the casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes. No extraordinary factors have ever been identified. End quote. And essentially they also sort of go out to say that while the number of shipwrecks in plane incidents may seem high for that kind of concentrated area, when you you know, look at the factors of, like the traffic in that area and whatever else, that it's not that outstanding. So there are some Bermuda Triangle horror movies.

Speaker 2:

There's really only one. There's the big one, and then there's all the like, the small, low budget copycats. What's the big one? Scooby Doo, pirates, ahoy it's still up for debate, but this a lot of people feel that this was the direct inspiration for Shakespeare's the Tempest.

Speaker 1:

I see, what was that show that we watched? That was on Netflix when we had COVID a few years ago. That was like on a ship. Oh, that has sort of a Bermuda Triangle vibe.

Speaker 2:

It was a number it wasn't 1408, because that's the John Cusack movie. You hate that movie. It's actually really bad. 1899. 1899.

Speaker 1:

That show was super, super cool. It was When's season two coming? Has it already come?

Speaker 2:

I doubt it. All those.

Speaker 1:

It was such a cliffhanger.

Speaker 2:

Okay, we're going to just derail for a second here, but I had a recent conversation with somebody about all these shows that are coming out and they never get a second season and it's super, super frustrating, frustrating. It feels like shows that we grew up with. They always got to like season five, season eight, whatever, and now we get so many series that people really love. Maybe they get season two, but a season three wow, that's rare you're right, it was canceled.

Speaker 1:

I just looked at the articles about it, which is so sad. It was good, it was so intriguing and they like built up all these cliffhangers.

Speaker 2:

I feel like but that's that's the kicker. Like these shows are so good and because they're expensive not because, but like yeah, because they're not skimping on stuff yeah unless a show show makes such a stupid amount of money that canceling it would be a death sentence for the network.

Speaker 2:

They cancel it because they're all after those whales. That's all they want, because there's. It's not like we have, you're just standard TV networks anymore that only have so many programming hours for live TV. Now we have streaming services that are just pumping out such an oversaturation of content that the competition just among their own content is choking their own network out.

Speaker 1:

Well, plus, it's such a marketing spend, right, they have to put so much into the marketing of it, and they always do that for season one, unless you have season two standing by. It's been so long now, you lose momentum and there's, I I bet, diminishing returns on a season two and a season three. Because you know it's like when we do a series like this, right, we're gonna put out however many episodes, this is, say it's three parts. Part one will always have the most listeners, part two and it will go down from there. That's sort of just how it goes.

Speaker 2:

Right, but that's during the initial drop. If your show is really good and you get five, six seasons out of it and then it just lives on streaming forever and goes into syndication, then that can make a lot of money over time. But no one's willing to do it.

Speaker 1:

It can be a tricky thing also with. You know, a Netflix or Hulu type model is that they and you might be surprised to hear this, but everything is right now subscription revenue right, that's going to change. Ads are being introduced to Netflix and you know there's ads on Hulu, so they can tell right, there's ad revenue tied to certain things. But let's just talk about Netflix pre-ads for a second.

Speaker 2:

Sure.

Speaker 1:

It's actually really difficult to know why somebody joins Netflix, right? So the whole thing is to put out a show that's so intriguing that somebody who doesn't already have Netflix buys Netflix and subscribes to it. But it's really hard, even with the data, to know what show made somebody subscribe to Netflix or what show makes them leave Netflix when it's not there anymore or when they've watched it. You know, unless someone comes in and watches one show and leaves, which no one does, right? They come in and they watch all kinds of things and they're like oh, friends is here, whatever, we're going to watch this. That's also why it's very difficult to program in this way, because you have viewership numbers, obviously, and that gives you a lot, but you don't always know why people are coming in or leaving.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, I miss classic Netflix that had the five star rating. I know you talk about this a lot Because that's their perfect metric. If people watch a thing and leave a one star, you know that's not what got them here and if they cancel, that's what made them cancel. There you go. They were too offended.

Speaker 1:

The Bermuda Triangle horror movie that I want to talk about briefly, because I did watch it, is a movie called Triangle from 2009. It was written and directed by Christopher Smith and it stars Melissa George. The story centers around five people who set sail on a day cruise but soon encounter a storm. Things start to get really weird when a rescue ship arrives to save them, and I'll sort of leave you there on a cliffhanger. It's not great and none of the Bermuda Triangle films that you know have come up like. There's none that really stand out to me as like oh man, that is the pinnacle of a Bermuda Triangle film. But I wanted to start with the Bermuda Triangle. A, because it's one of the few sort of paranormal ocean topics that we can discuss, and B.

Speaker 2:

I do think some of this like mysterious, like even like Lost, I think in some ways takes some of that lore from something like the Bermuda Triangle, did they?

Speaker 1:

go down in the Bermuda Triangle? No, but it's similar, right Like it could be.

Speaker 1:

It could be, and so that's why I think it can be applied to a lot of different things. Even if people aren't naming the bermuda triangle, this idea of like this mysterious patch of ocean that's like paranormal and causes shipwrecks and plane wrecks and which, again, is like traced back before columbus times right, because he had that experience when he sailed through to colonize the fucking. He sailed through to colonize the fucking world. But the point is, even if a film isn't being called a Bermuda Triangle film or, you know, 1899 or Lost or things like this, they're obviously taking parts of this lore and urban legend and applying it to those horror based films and shows.

Speaker 2:

Right, and now you've basically made some kind of historical fiction in a weird way, right, uh? And that always adds just that extra little bit of relatability and that makes better horror yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So, uh, a nut to still be cracked for someone to make a really good bermuda triangle horror movie what would your bermuda triangle horror movie about? It would be about a ship from modern times, like a yacht of rich people, say, or something like that, getting lost in a storm in the Bermuda Triangle and running into like a ship from 1301 or something 1301. It's like a time travel vortex.

Speaker 2:

So we're back to the canoes.

Speaker 1:

A Viking ship. If you want to go back to that, it's not really horrifying but it's just kind of it would almost be a comedy because it would be kind of funny. You know, all these billionaires and their yacht like interacting with these vikings from 1301. That'd be kind of cool like a buddy comedy a buddy.

Speaker 2:

What?

Speaker 1:

yeah, viking, viking billionaire love story. I think it could be kind of cute yeah, we got.

Speaker 2:

we got freaking Elon Musk and Torstein the Impaler impaling Elon Musk. It is a comedy. Yeah, that'd be fun. I also like the idea of an area of sea that almost like has Pac-Man rules. Okay, where once you go in, as soon as you try to leave you, just kind of loop.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, like that game. We played that video game. Hope floats hope floats no, it's not called hope floats. What's it called? Hope something?

Speaker 2:

hope something.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's part of the dark anthologies like choose your adventure games it's like a new england town at night time, but you're sort of every time you try to leave on a bridge, you just yeah loop back through the town but know if this was just like the laws of this place.

Speaker 2:

Like, yeah, it's scary if you're all alone and you just can't leave, but if there's other people that are already stuck there and there's only so many supplies to go around?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, could be horrifying, horrifying, Cannibalism ahoy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then the only way to do it is to. You know, you give Shaggy and Scooby some Scooby snacks, that's right, and then they just MacGyver their way out.

Speaker 1:

That's right. The Mariana Trench is the deepest ocean trench on Earth, located about 124 miles east of the Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean. For context, the deepest part of the trench is about 1.2 miles farther from sea level than the peak of Mount Everest.

Speaker 2:

That is actually up for debate.

Speaker 1:

No, it's not.

Speaker 2:

It is no, it's not, because, according to the documentary the Meg, the bottom of the Mariana Trench is not solid. It's actually a layer of super cold water that bounces sonar off. So it looks like it's the bottom bottom, but you can go deeper and they have prehistoric animals down there okay, that sounds like the plot of the meg, not actually anything, true? That's a hundred percent. What happens yeah?

Speaker 1:

challenger deep is a section of the trench which is dubbed the deepest of earth's seabed. It can be found on the southern end of the trench. It's between 35,768 and 35,856 feet deep. The weight of the ocean above the trench is so great it creates a pressure of about 15,750 pounds per square inch. Similar to my love for old-timey people riding amusement park rides, if you will recall our amusement park series, I also have a deep love for old-timey people riding amusement park rides. If you will recall our amusement park series, I also have a deep love for old-timey people doing ocean research. In 1875, a weighted rope was used to measure the depth of the trench, which initially showed the depth as about 26,850 feet deep. This was called the Challenger Expedition.

Speaker 2:

How the hell do you know when you've hit the bottom? Were you just like? I think that's it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But the rope weighs so much it's just going to keep pulling.

Speaker 1:

No, it's all the way down. Listen, do you understand what I'm?

Speaker 2:

saying there's so much rope out that it'll keep pulling.

Speaker 1:

It's weighted. Yes, so it goes straight down to the bottom. Yes, yes so it goes straight down to the bottom. Yes, I understand, but even one that's touching the bottom. There's so much line out there that that weighs.

Speaker 2:

I'm not saying that this was a perfect. It'll keep pulling. How do they know?

Speaker 1:

They don't know they were wrong. That's the point that they were wrong and they were probably wearing ridiculous outfits. Like those Scooby-Doo diving outfits.

Speaker 2:

The diving bells yeah, scooby-doo. Diving outfits the diving bells yeah. No, they're wearing the same stuff that they play polo in.

Speaker 1:

Polo. As the years went on, and measurement means improved, researchers were able to get a more accurate sense of its depth. On average, the oceans of the world are typically about 12,000 feet deep. At their deepest parts, about 2.5 miles 2.3 miles While the trench, by some measurements, comes in around 6.5 miles deep, so it's more than double right, the average deepest part of any given ocean. A portion of the trench is named the Hadal Zone, named for Hades, the Greek god of the underworld. Here's where it gets wild. People have indeed been to the bottom of the trench. Yeah, james Cameron did it, including James Cameron, but we'll come back to that.

Speaker 1:

He goes everywhere there have been about 22 expeditions with humans to the bottom of the trench. The first manned expedition took place in a submersible called tristay, or trist, and january I mean sad that. That's kind of a bummer of a name. In January of 1960, so January 1960, the first manned expedition took place to the bottom of the trench. So the two people on board one was US Naval Officer and Oceanographer Don Walsh.

Speaker 2:

And the second was Edward von Winklejones.

Speaker 1:

The other was Jacques Picard, a Swiss oceanographer and engineer. Engineer, despite the massive amounts of pressure. Walsh and picard claimed to see large creatures at the bottom of the trench, large in comparison to the single cell organisms that scientists had thought could only survive down there.

Speaker 2:

But not the meg okay so the the jason statham documentary shows a huge variety of life down there we're talking about shrimp and flatfish.

Speaker 1:

Flatfish, that's right what's a flatfish? Though some modern scientists even question these claims that shrimp and flatfish could survive anything can survive down there with what are you preparation.

Speaker 2:

Okay, there's one bit in the meg to the trench when they're stuck in a part of a station that is on the floor of the mariana trench uh-huh they're gonna drown.

Speaker 2:

so he has to swim outside without a suit to go in the other, like airlock, right and the only way. But he realizes he can do this if he has no air in his body. So he just gets. He fills his lungs with water, he fills his eyeballs with water and then, because he knows he only has about 40 seconds, so he has to swim real fast, but he does fine, sorry spoilers.

Speaker 1:

Oh boy, so it's sort of wild that a boat from the 60s could withstand the immense pressures of the depths. I know, alan, that doesn't really compare to someone removing the oxygen from their body.

Speaker 2:

I like he also just does it manually by just going.

Speaker 1:

In 2011,. Organisms of about four inches were observed via remote cameras, which again was a major revelation. Crews also went down in 1996, 2009, and James Cameron visited in 2012. Cameron was inside a submersible called deep sea challenger and reached a depth of over 35 000 feet.

Speaker 2:

So wait you, you say 35 000, oh 35 000 feet 35 000 feet gotcha, I'm thinking like 100 feet. Yeah, that's not even a single mile.

Speaker 1:

No, 35 000 that's more impressive.

Speaker 2:

Six and a half miles.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a few horror films to touch on here, right? So obviously we have the Meg from 2018 that Alan has been shamelessly plugging, but we also have a few other films a film called the Abyss from 1989, which, if you haven't seen it, is a sleeper hit. The Abyss is really quite a satisfying and, dare I say, beautiful horror ocean film.

Speaker 2:

The Abyss is one of the best underwater movies.

Speaker 1:

I agree. Speaking of underwater, there's also Underwater from 2020, which is that Kristen Stewart film. It's kind of dumb, yeah, but it's not terrible, and there's not a lot of these deep ocean topic films?

Speaker 2:

There isn't, which is why I was so excited and they just kind of squandered the big monsters. Yeah, sorry, spoilers. Spoilers.

Speaker 1:

When I think about these horror films, I think about the often used anecdote that we know more about space than we know about our own oceans. There is something primarily horrifying about the deepest and darkest parts of the ocean, and when you add in the dangers of the pressure and the unknown sea life, it creates a perfect setting for a horror film, though, again, only a horror film with a healthy budget can really pull it off.

Speaker 2:

I mean, what is it that the bottom of the ocean is all about dealing with amazing crushing pressure and keeping it out. In space is all about dealing with one atmosphere and keeping it in. And space is all about dealing with one atmosphere and keeping it in. So like, yeah, it's fundamentally easier to survive in a vacuum than it is to deal with the absolute crushing pressure of the bottom of the ocean. Also, it's just not nearly as glamorous because you can't see anything. You can't shine a light. It doesn't go anywhere.

Speaker 1:

Well, I also think more so than the filmability of these things. It's really interesting that scientists know less about the oceans right than they do about space.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's right here and they know even less about how women's bodies works exactly good job alan um, but I mean that's that's kind of the thing of space is at least a frontier. We don't know where it goes. There's all these things left. It's like painfully obvious that there's so much left to explore. We know where the ocean is. We do we know where it goes, and I'm sure it's home to many secrets, but it's not the sweeping discoveries that you'd think of, as opposed to landing on Mars.

Speaker 1:

Sure yeah.

Speaker 2:

So I get it. You know, everyone's got to impress the investors.

Speaker 1:

But it still does have that rich appeal right that those billionaire people last year was it two years ago in the submersible that exploded, Oh's still, I think, a market out there for very rich people to go down in these expeditions to the titanic or whatever else.

Speaker 2:

And absolutely, and if they built some kind of you know underwater city yeah then there would be a much bigger uh draw, you know, just something that gets some kind of destination, something that people can build towards.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Speaking of the lost city of Atlantis was first written about by Plato in his works Timaeus and Critias, dating back to 360 BCE. It's a fictional city that Plato uses as an allegory. Plato describes Atlantis as a powerful nation that sank in only a night and a day into the ocean around 9600 BCE. The nation had a constitution that is very similar to the one that Plato outlined himself, and the story goes that as the nation grew and became more dominant, the values of the people were lost. After much conquest and colonization of their nearby nations, the gods sent storms and eventually sunk the island as punishment right. So it's this very classic tale, which in some ways is actually similar to some of the allegory that people take from the sinking of the Titanic, but that the nation got too big and too cocky, if you will right, and was punished and sunk for it will right and was punished and sunk for it.

Speaker 2:

You know it's. It's just another tale of it's just another version of tale of icarus. They have a technological advancement and they fly too close to the sun, right?

Speaker 1:

yeah you.

Speaker 2:

You can see a great iteration of this in aquaman because, there's like the whole thing of atlantis and they have all their wizards and they're playing with their magic crystal and the. You're not supposed to play with the magic crystal because it's too powerful yeah and they play with it and it basically destroys the island with magic's power, uh, and transforms everyone into fish people it's a dramatic day in in the sea and then I guess also in dc.

Speaker 2:

What was it? Oh, what was this from? It was one of the justice league movies, but vandal savage destroys atlantis who's vandal savage? Vandal savage is like such a freaking cool villain. He's a. He's basically a caveman okay and a meteor hit back in caveman times and it made him immortal. He's just a caveman that has just lived since then and he's a super immortal and that he can't be killed or that he just isn't.

Speaker 2:

He doesn't have a mortal lifespan he can survive any injury oh wow, that's powerful yeah, and so he's like hyper intelligent because he's all these years to you know, develop sure um you go to oxford I mean there's a lot of vandal savage lore, but anyways, he destroyed atlantis as kind of his like um eugenics experiment yeah uh, because it was like a really advanced society and he just wanted to sink it because he knew that by destroying a it's like in um the movie unbreakable yeah by killing a mass amount of people, the few that survive are going to be powerful as fuck right, and so the I don't know, like when you use hand sanitizer, and it kills 99.9 of the germs, that's.

Speaker 2:

It's the 0.1 and then he's like, yeah, the 0.1 could now breathe water. And so he's like, ah, that worked right. I mean, that was a real gamble, I'll tell you what?

Speaker 1:

but it worked out some ancient greeks took plato's story as history and others as metaphor, and, as such, there has been hot debate about the existence of Atlantis ever since. According to Plato, Atlantis was an island that was larger than Asia Minor and Libya combined. It was located in the Atlantic Ocean, just past the Pillars of Hercules, which most people believe refers to the Strait of Gibraltar. But, as we all know, Atlantis and its mythology has evolved far past Plato's initial writings. In 1627, Francis Bacon published quote the New Atlantis. I don't know why I said quote.

Speaker 2:

I mean, yeah, it's, he named it right, it's his words.

Speaker 1:

Which depicted an advanced society similar to Plato's version. But it wasn't until 1882 when Ignatius L Donnelly, a former member of the House of Representatives in the US, published his work titled quote why do I keep saying that I don't know? Published his work titled Atlantis the Antediluvian World. It was this work that inspired the great hunt for the lost city of Atlantis, the antediluvian world. It was this work that inspired the great hunt for the lost city of Atlantis. Quoting from the Historycom article on Atlantis, quote Donnelly hypothesized an advanced civilization whose immigrants had populated much of ancient Europe, africa and the Americas and whose heroes had inspired Greek, hindu and Scandinavian mythology.

Speaker 1:

Donnelly's theories were popularized and elaborated by turn-of-the-20th-century theosophists and are often incorporated into contemporary New Age beliefs. From time to time, archaeologists and historians locate evidence A swampy prehistoric city in coastal Spain, a suspicious undersea rock formation in the Bahamas that may be a source of the Atlantis story. Of these, the site with the widest acceptance is the Greek island of Santorini. Ancient Thera, a half-submerged caldera created by the massive second millennium BC volcanic eruption whose tsunami may have hastened the collapse of Hastened. Whose tsunami may have hastened the collapse of the Minion civilization on Crete End quote.

Speaker 2:

Did you start a quote? Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

That was a quote from the Historycom article.

Speaker 2:

I understand.

Speaker 1:

Okay, tell us what you know about Caldera's Allen.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so a caldera is a crater-like formation. Yeah, left after a volcano erupts, because then all the magma flows, you know away, yep. Makes the nice little peaks and everything, and then hardens and then you're left with this dish, a cauldron, if you will. Sure, calderas are cool and spooky because you're like well, this exploded once and they typically explode multiple times.

Speaker 1:

Do you believe in Atlantis?

Speaker 2:

I think it's more plausible than other fabled places, the idea of there's some kind of island that is more advanced and then gets completely erased off the map. Sure, that could just be a big storm, right, and then it becomes legend.

Speaker 1:

And then, of of course, the legend grows Roanoke, oh, it's storm of the century, that's right. Well, good, good, uh, thought association.

Speaker 2:

Do I think that there's an underwater civilization?

Speaker 1:

No, yeah, which is a bummer Cause I do. I just would love to live in a world where there's merpeople. I want that more than almost anything else Mermaids for president, you know. So there's a few Atlantis movies to discuss. Not a lot here, but Siren of Atlantis is an old film from 1949. Beyond Atlantis from 1973 is a Filipino-American horror film set in Atlantis. It was directed by Eddie Romero and stars Patrick Wayne and John Ashley. Cold Skin from 2017 is a more modern take on Atlantis horror. It was directed by Xavier Jens and written by Jesus Olmo. And, of course, films like Aquaman, which are not horror, are set in this fictional city which Alan just mentioned.

Speaker 2:

Let us not forget Atlantis, the Lost Empire. What's that You've never seen it I don't think so oh my goodness, this was like is it animated?

Speaker 1:

yeah, maybe it's so good it sounds familiar, it's right up there with treasure planet did it come out like when we were kids?

Speaker 2:

2001 yeah so you were like what three?

Speaker 1:

no, no, I am having so much fun. I long to write my magnum opus someday when I'm like 75.

Speaker 2:

75? Will be To run for president.

Speaker 1:

An ocean horror novel that is terrifying and filled with lore. It's just like Novel, not film.

Speaker 1:

Both. It feels like it's in my blood. You know, like maybe I was reincarnated In one life I was a siren and in one life, if maybe I was reincarnated in one life I was a siren and in one life I was a captain and in one life I was a pirate cyclops yeah, seriously, like I'm like, yeah, I'm here for all of it. So I'm this is. This series has been long overdue and I'm very, very, very excited. This is gonna be a long series and we've kind of talked a lot today about geography, right, we've talked about the Bermuda Triangle, mariana Trench, we talked about Atlantis, these very specific locations. Next part, we're going to get into creatures and things like that mythology a bit more. You know, mermaid siren type discussion, and then it's going to go from there. There's a lot of other stuff that we're going to talk about.

Speaker 1:

We're going to talk about sailor ghost ships maritime lore, ghost ships, the kraken, sailor lore, anything you can think of really you put it in there, I think it's coming. I put in a lot.

Speaker 2:

This is our longest outline by magnitudes that's how we're breaking it up, because we're sleeping yeah.

Speaker 1:

So there's, there's gonna be a lot parts, but hopefully that will make them more enjoyable for everybody. And I do want to say this now because this feels like a feat for me. We received so many an overwhelming amount of well-written, horrifying, ocean-themed horror story submissions that we couldn't limit ourselves, honestly, to one parts worth. So even the Lunatics Library aspect of this series which of course is coming needed a little something extra. So there will be two parts, and those two parts will be full of very, very terrifying and well narrated ocean horror, which I'm really excited because I think that's a great way to round out all the different topics and tropes that we will discuss in the next few parts here. So thank you, guys, so much.

Speaker 1:

I also just want to say because this is such a big pinnacle series for us emotionally obviously you can see me gushing here we have a new design which is in our merch store, created by our our very, very talented friend, pilar Kep, one of our favorites. You can get horror on the high seas sweatshirts, tanks, t-shirts, tote bags, hats, everything that you need to kind of round out your summer into early fall. Please go check those out. They are beautiful, they're spooky, they are very oceanic and they call upon a lot of the different themes that we are going to explore in the next few parts together. Alan, what ocean horror theme are you most looking forward to discussing in this series?

Speaker 2:

um, I do enjoy speaking of ocean creatures. It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of really cool things that actually exist and even cooler things that probably don't yeah uh, and I also watched a lot of ocean horror movies in preparation for this yeah so I mean I've already been softballing in some real killers looking at you, the meg in the meg to the trench, but uh watched a ton, so I can't wait to discuss those amazing.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you guys so much for being here. We love seasonal horror, as is clear if you follow me on Instagram. We will be back very soon with part two of Horror on the High Seas. Until then, stay spooky, stay well and we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 2:

Bye, bye.

People on this episode

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Abby Brenker

Co-host
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Alan Kudan

Co-host