Lunatics Radio Hour: The History of Horror
Lunatics Radio Hour is a non-fiction history podcast about the history of horror and the horror of history. Each episode explores real, documented events where fear, violence, survival, and the unknown shaped human lives and cultures. The show also traces how historical events influenced film, examining how real-world horrors became the stories and images that appear on screen.
Topics include dark history, psychological phenomena, folklore rooted in fact, and the historical roots of horror cinema. Most episodes focus on researched historical subjects. Occasional short fiction stories are included and clearly labeled.
If you’re drawn to the darker side of history and the real events behind horror films, Lunatics Radio Hour explores where history, fear, and cinema intersect.
Lunatics Radio Hour: The History of Horror
Episode 175 - Winter Horror: Snow Cryptids
Abby and Alan conclude the four part winter horror series. This week they discuss The Yerti and other snow cryptids. They even talk through some of the most famous instances of ice mummies.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Ludatics Radio Hour Podcast. My name is Abby Brinker. I'm sitting here with Alan Coudan.
SPEAKER_01:Hello.
SPEAKER_00:And today we are concluding our four-part series, all on the intersection of winter and horror.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna be sad to see this one go.
SPEAKER_00:I know. This has been a fun, an unexpectedly fun series.
SPEAKER_01:Just the fact that we've been we've been going through all the research and the movies and all this stuff, while it's been a brutally cold winter, it just seemed fitting. It's like watching, you know, Christmas movies on Christmas.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, exactly. Even right now, we're recording right before 20 inches of snow is supposed to hit us in New York, and of course, this episode will come out right after that. But yeah, it's kind of been finally a cold winter again.
SPEAKER_01:I don't even remember the last state of emergency they've had in New York for snow.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, same. It's been a long time.
SPEAKER_01:I'm sure maybe, maybe happened like three days ago, and I just didn't know.
SPEAKER_00:So you might ask, what's left to cover with the intersection of horror and winter?
SPEAKER_01:I have no idea.
SPEAKER_00:It's gonna be a little bit of a hodgepodge episode, to be honest, but mostly we are going to talk about winter cryptids.
SPEAKER_01:I was just kidding, because we announced at the end of the last episode.
SPEAKER_00:And then some other bits and bobs that I just felt like didn't fit in anywhere else, but were worth talking about.
SPEAKER_01:I I will say that I am curious exactly where this is going because we talked about the thing during the last episode.
SPEAKER_00:That's not a winter cryptid.
SPEAKER_01:It is to me.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Let's start with our sources. An article called Watch This Snowball Fight from 1897 for a jolt of pure joy by Sam Anderson on the New York Times, a Britannica entry on the Yeti and the Almus, a Smithsonian magazine article by Colin Dickey, Why Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman Loom Large in the Human Imagination, a National Geographic article by Simon Warwall, This Man searched for the Yeti for 60 years and found it. A National Geographic article by Riley Black, Bigfoot Meets the Urine, and Wikipedia entries on a lot of the topics today because they were very hard to research, including Ninjin, the Cryptid Whale, Urine, and Almus.
SPEAKER_01:I'm sure I misheard you, but did you say Bigfoot meets urine?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but not urine with a U. Y-E-R-E-N.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for the clarification.
SPEAKER_00:You're welcome. We've been talking about an episode on the Yeti for many years on this podcast. We had initially found that there wasn't really enough material to sustain its own episode, but it fits perfectly in this series.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my god, is this the Yeti episode again?
SPEAKER_00:The difference between the Yeti and the other figures that we've talked about in the first episode, to me, is that the Yeti is more of a cryptid, while those other things that we talked about feel more like mythologies and gods and goddesses, right? There's definitely a difference between a Bigfoot, a Yeti, and Father Winter. Those are different concepts.
SPEAKER_01:Also just pure science fiction.
SPEAKER_00:The Yeti is sometimes called the Abominable Snowman, and it's a cryptid reported in the Himalayan mountain region, primarily in Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and northern India. Reports describe a large, upright, ape-like figure seen in snowy, high altitude environments. Now the word Yeti likely comes from Tibetan terms such as Yeti, Y-E-H-T-E-H, which can translate roughly to rock bear or animal of rocky places. Yeah. Which is, you know, I think it kind of gives us this sense of like, oh, it's in the language itself, it's not being called a supernatural creature. It's being called this animal that hangs out in the mountains.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:Early local accounts often describe the Yeti as a real animal. Again, not like a spirit or a monster, but something that's real and tangible, which again is why I feel like it's more similar to Bigfoot sightings than mythological stories of ancient spirits. Western awareness of the Yeti began in the early 20th century during British expeditions to the Himalayas. In 1921, members of a British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition reported seeing large footprints in the snow at high elevation. Local guides referred to the tracks as belonging to a quote, Metokanjmi, meaning man bear snowman.
SPEAKER_01:Sounds like South Park.
SPEAKER_00:A journalist later mistranslated this phrase as abominable snowman, a name that quickly gained popularity. I'm gonna quote now from the Smithsonian article by Colin Dickey, quote, The name the abominable snowman was originally a translation error. Henry Newman, an Anglo-journalist working in Calcutta in the 1920s, first heard reports of a wild man on the slopes of the Himalayas from members of a 1921 British expedition to summit Everest, led by Lieutenant Colonel C.K. Howard Burry. Sherpas on the expedition discovered footprints that they believed belonged to the wild man of the snows, and word quickly spread throughout the Tibetans. Newman, hearing these reports, garbled the Tibetan term, which means man-like wild creature, misrecognizing meadow as mech, and mistranslating wild as filthy or dirty, settling finally on the abominable snowman for his English-speaking readers. The name stuck. Cryptozoologist Ivan Sanderson would later describe the impact of the name as being like an explosion of an atom bomb, capturing the imagination of school kids and armchair explorers all over Europe and America. End quote.
SPEAKER_01:How did he disseminate that term? Like was it in a magazine or something? Like, how do you go from like one guy's mispronunciation to school children talking about it?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, this was a journalist.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so this was for a publication of someone who traveled.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Got it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Interest in the Yeti increased yet again in the 1950s as more mountaineering expeditions entered the region. In 1951, mountaineer Eric Shipman photographed a series of large footprints near Mount Everest. These images became some of the most widely circulated pieces of supposed physical evidence and are still frequently referenced today.
SPEAKER_01:There's photos of the the snowman?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, here I'll show you. No, the their footprint, photos of the footprints.
SPEAKER_01:It is three toes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and it's well, three or four, and it's next to an ice pick for scale.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it's quite large.
SPEAKER_00:Do you remember the time we went to Animal Kingdom and we rode the Yeti ride like 17 times in a row?
SPEAKER_01:So, okay, yes, I do, and I know we've talked about the story. So I'm not sure if we talked about it on the failed Yeti episode that never got released, or just a million other times. Or like d first off, how much of this research was pulled from the Yeti episode and how much is brand spanking new? I re I didn't pull anything from this is this is the bleeding edge of Yeti journalism.
SPEAKER_00:I'd say so.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Okay, I guess we'll just uh tell it again because it is so great and all honestly like one of the best Yeti experiences that you or I have have ever had.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:So j do you want to go ahead.
SPEAKER_00:Go ahead, Ann.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so we went to Animal Kingdom over Christmas.
SPEAKER_00:This was many years ago.
SPEAKER_01:This was what, 1982, 13? Around then, yeah. Animal Kingdom had just opened. Uh and the apparently one of the tricks in order to be able to go on these, you know, very popular rides, and the Yeti being a roller coaster that goes all over a mountain and inside and all this stuff, is to time it with certain events around the park, such as the Christmas Day Parade. So while all the children and families were watching the the Christmas parade, we went to the Yeti.
SPEAKER_00:It actually wasn't that we did that at Animal Kingdom the day before. This was like a light show on a lake or something, but it was like the time when the park was closing, so everybody goes on their way out to this light show, which we could see from the Yeti ride. And we literally just it was just us and our friend Jim, and we went through without any line. Like we were the only people. We went through like three or four times.
SPEAKER_01:Sorry, you gotta cut me some slack. This was like what, 40, 60 years ago? That's right.
SPEAKER_00:During the same decade, so the 1950s, several expeditions claimed to collect physical remains that they believed belonged to the Yeti, or that they claimed belonged to the Yeti, including hair samples and a so-called Yeti scalp kept at a monastery in Nepal. Later investigations showed that the scalp was likely made from the skin of a Siro, a type of goat antelope that's native to the region. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, reports continued from local villagers, herders, and climbers. Sightings were usually brief and happened during harsh weather conditions and again at high altitude. Many described a dark figure moving quickly across snowfields or rocky slopes, often seen at a far distance.
SPEAKER_01:Of course.
SPEAKER_00:In the 21st century, scientific studies began focusing on genetic analysis of alleged Yeti remains. A 2014 DNA study examined hair samples from the Himalayas and found that they matched known animal species, including bears. A more comprehensive 2017 study concluded that most Yeti samples belong to Himalayan brown bears, Tibetan brown bears, or Asian black bears. Researchers have suggested that bear behavior, including upright walking and distorted tracks and melting snow, could explain many Yeti sightings. High altitude environments can also cause fatigue, hypoxia, and visual hallucinations or misinterpretations, increasing the likelihood of a mistaken identity.
SPEAKER_01:And Yetis are famous uh wilderness doctors, and so once they see you suffering, they come.
SPEAKER_00:Quoting again from the Smithsonian article by Colin Dickey, quote, Reports of such creatures, like Bigfoot, aren't new. They've been around for centuries. Bigfoot and its siblings, Sasquatch and the Yeti, have long been recognized by folklorists as variations on an archetype known as the wild man. The wild man legend is old and spans many cultures. Usually the story involves some large hairy figure, like a man but different, harassing a town, stealing food or livestock, and drinking from the town's water supply. You eventually the villagers swap the water for fermented milk or other alcoholic saporific. The wild man falls asleep, allowing the villagers to kill or capture him. End quote. We also did a Bigfoot series on this podcast, and it's not all that different from the Yeti in some ways, and we did a lot on the Wild Man as part of that.
SPEAKER_01:Bigfoot in in the winter.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. I really liked the Bigfoot series that we did.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I did too. And actually it was since we've done the Bigfoot episode and our failed Yeti episode, I've noticed that there's actually a ton of Yeti movies as long as you're okay watching really shitty B movies. There's been like a, I think like an explosion of these like types of super low budget indie horror movies starting in, I don't know, just pre-pandemic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the mid-2000s. We're gonna talk about some of them in a minute here. Despite scientific explanations, belief in the Yeti persists in the Himalayan region and popular culture. For many local communities, the Yeti is considered a rare animal rather than a myth. For outsiders, it remains an unresolved mystery, tied to one of the most remote and extreme environments on Earth. And of course, the Yeti has earned its place in pop culture. Even Bumble, an abominable snow monster of the north, is a staple of old timey Christmas movies. Especially the 1964 stop motion Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. True.
SPEAKER_01:Isn't there a bad snowman in one of those movies? The abominable snowman. That's Rudolph.
SPEAKER_00:Well, he's a Yeti. He's not a snowman. There's a snowman, but the snowman's just the narrator.
SPEAKER_01:Oh. He's not bad?
SPEAKER_00:Are you thinking of Snowmiser?
SPEAKER_01:Who's Snow Miser?
SPEAKER_00:Heat Miser and Snowmiser?
SPEAKER_01:I I don't know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00:Are you kidding? I literally made you watch this movie this Christmas.
SPEAKER_01:What movie?
SPEAKER_00:Because I wanted us to dress up as Heatmiser and Snowmiser, and nobody knew what they were, and we rented the movie and watched it with my whole family.
SPEAKER_01:I wasn't there.
SPEAKER_00:You were there.
SPEAKER_01:What movie?
SPEAKER_00:It's a stop motion. It was like a 20-minute movie. It's from a movie called The Year Without Santa Claus.
SPEAKER_01:I have n this this does not ring a bell at all. I okay, you're showing me the picture. I now recognize Heat Miser and Snow Miser from when you were trying to pitch it as a holiday costume.
SPEAKER_00:Did you not stay the whole time at my house this year?
SPEAKER_01:Didn't see that movie.
SPEAKER_00:The first horror movie to mention is called Abominable Snowman or The Snow Creature from 1954. It's an early monster film featuring a Yeti brought from the Himalayas to Los Angeles where it escapes. It's more of a creature feature than pure horror, but we we don't mind that.
SPEAKER_01:What year is it from?
SPEAKER_00:1954.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, a classic.
SPEAKER_00:A classic. There's a movie called The Abominable Snowman from 1957, a hammer film's production that is set in the Himalayas. It focuses on an expedition searching for the Yeti and the moral consequences of exploiting it. I would say a very King Kong-esque storyline.
SPEAKER_01:Kekong.
SPEAKER_00:Snow Beast from 1977 is a made-for-TV horror movie about a Yeti attacking a ski resort in Colorado.
SPEAKER_01:We watch Snow Beast.
SPEAKER_00:It's one of the earliest and most direct Yeti horror films.
SPEAKER_01:Pretty good.
SPEAKER_00:Shriek of the Mutilated from 1974 is about a group of college students who search for a Yeti in the mountains, leading to murder and a twist ending. It's often cited as a cult Yeti slasher film.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know if we watched it. No, we've I don't know if I've heard about that one.
SPEAKER_00:No, that one was new to me. Yeti Curse of the Snow Demon from 2008 is a survival horror film about a plane crash in the Himalayas where survivors are hunted by a Yeti.
SPEAKER_01:That was a good one.
SPEAKER_00:The Legend of the Yeti from the same year, 2008, is again more of like an adventure film than a horror film, but it includes Yeti lore and dangerous encounters in very snowy and harsh winter environments. Rage of the Yeti from 2011. I know Alan likes this one. Oh, it's a c it's great. It's about a Yeti that emerges from the melting Arctic ice and attacks a research station. It combines monster horror with climate anxiety. And finally, in 2013, we have a film simply called Yeti, which was a low-budget creature feature involving a Yeti attacking a ski resort. It's a very typical kind of sci-fi style monster movie.
SPEAKER_01:Huh. I really thought that there were more movies that came out since like 2018 and onwards.
SPEAKER_00:There could be.
SPEAKER_01:Or it's just more of these, you know, low budget movies have been have found better homes in streaming and just now they're being served because also, you know, I like this content.
SPEAKER_00:But the Yeti isn't the only snow cryptid out there, just the one with the best PR team. The Almus is a cryptid reported in Central Asia, particularly in Mongolia, the Caucasus Mountains, and parts of Siberia. Unlike many cryptids, the Almus has been described not as a monster, but rather as an unknown human-like species. Generally, this one is like more clearly derived from a hoax or an animal than other cryptids, I think, are. There's like very little mystery here that this is real.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:Reports of the almus date back centuries and were recorded in travel accounts, local testimony, and later by Soviet researchers. Descriptions commonly portray the almus as shorter than Bigfoot, covered in hair, and capable of basic speech or tool use. It is usually described as living in cold conditions or mountainous environments rather than forests. During the 20th century, Soviet scientists conducted informal investigations into almus reports. Some researchers treated the subject seriously, collecting eyewitness accounts from remote villages. No physical evidence was ever verified and no confirmed remains were found. Modern scientists generally conclude that all miss sightings likely stem from misidentified humans or bears.
SPEAKER_01:Or human bears.
SPEAKER_00:And I think that's what it is, really.
SPEAKER_01:You know, people get lonely in the Arctic.
SPEAKER_00:The Yeren, Y-E-R-E-N, is a cryptid reported in China, primarily in mountainous and forested regions, such as Hubei Province. Sightings increased during the 20th century, especially in colder remote areas with limited access. Witnesses described the Yeren as a large, upright, hairy figure, resembling a primitive human. Reports often came from farmers, hunters, and forestry workers. Unlike many cryptids, the urine became the subject of organized investigations. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Chinese government sponsored multiple expeditions to search for the Urine. These investigations collected footprint casts, hair samples, and eyewitness interviews. None of the physical evidence confirmed the existence of an unknown species. Most scientists believe that Urin sightings can be explained by misidentified bears, langers, or other wildlife combined with environmental conditions and again human error. It's a story as old as time.
SPEAKER_01:I have a question for you. Do you think there are any unknown species left on Earth that are large?
SPEAKER_00:Well, here's something interesting. I was watching a video yesterday that scientists just discovered a new life form that is extinct, or maybe it's extinct, but it had been I mean was extinct.
SPEAKER_01:Or was classified as extinct.
SPEAKER_00:No, like they just discovered that it ever existed at all. Oh they just found out about it.
SPEAKER_01:I see.
SPEAKER_00:And it essentially it was it's not fungus, but it's the closest to that, but it has like key chemical differences, and it would manifest by these like massive, massive upright structures, I guess, in the in like out in landscapes.
SPEAKER_01:Mushroom stalks.
SPEAKER_00:It was literally just the stalk though, and not the cap. It has a very like phallic look to it, and they were absolutely huge, like larger than trees. But they just found out that that existed like this week. So I think it's a little cocky of us to assume we know everything that's going on.
SPEAKER_01:Well, what I'm saying is, do you think alive today are any unknown species that are human size or greater?
SPEAKER_00:I think that is harder to imagine, but do I think that there are worlds and dimensions where other creatures or beings can glitch in or travel in that we don't quite understand? And if spotted in a certain situation, we believe to explain it by saying, Oh, that must be a yeti. Sure.
SPEAKER_01:You would, oh right, the time traveling yetis. I forgot all about that. Well, I mean, we you know, we discovered we only got our first sighting of a live squid in 2008.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:So, you know, it stands to reason that maybe there's some crap at the bottom of the ocean we don't know about. And, you know, every day we're discovering new species of uh of you know plants and insects and all these things, and like, yeah, plants can get pretty big, but it's it's not the same.
SPEAKER_00:But one of the more intriguing snow cryptids, in a category that is largely less researched and known about, at least I didn't know much about it, is polar sea cryptids.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, oh, so we d excellent segue, Abby, as we now go back to cryptids and undiscovered creatures of the ocean.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. Reports of unusual sea creatures in polar waters date back to early Arctic and Antarctic explorations. Sailors, whalers, and later naval crews described large identified shapes moving beneath ice or surfacing briefly in freezing seas. Some accounts come from military submarines and icebreaker crews who reported unexplained sonar contacts, or fast-moving underwater objects. These sightings are often classified as unidentified submerged objects or USOs.
SPEAKER_01:USOs, that's fun.
SPEAKER_00:Modern science attributes most of these reports to known phenomena, including large whales, giant squid, ice movement, sonar distortion, and extreme environmental conditions. Cold water affects sound transmission and visual perception, making accurate identification difficult.
SPEAKER_01:Not to mention when the new guy jumps out of the submarine to take a dip and they lock him out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, hazing. No confirmed evidence exists of unknown large marine species living exclusively in polar regions, but limited exploration means deep polar oceans remain poorly mapped, and I think it's kind of contradictory to say like no evidence exists of unknown creatures because. We don't know that they're there. So of course there's no evidence.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's just circular logic.
SPEAKER_00:But the aim of this podcast, as always, is to connect real life with fiction, to understand the folklore and history behind so many of our favorite horror movies. So in this series, we've covered a lot. Again, starting with mythology, then real life snow tragedies, the combination of isolation and winter, and now snow monsters. And along the way, we've talked about a lot of horror movies. But before we close out this series, I want to take a step back and talk a bit about the history of winter in cinema. One of the first films ever made was a recording from 1897 called Snowball Fight, directed by the Lumiere brothers. The film was a documentary that was shot in France, depicting people literally playing in the snow and throwing snowballs at each other.
SPEAKER_01:I've seen this movie.
SPEAKER_00:It's delightful. Sam Anderson for the New York Times wrote a delightful ode to this short film in 2020. Sam really spent time analyzing each person shown in this nonfiction snippet of life from the late 1800s. But I'm bringing up this short film mostly because it's one of the earliest recorded films of all time, and it's snow adjacent. But also because I think snow is, and forgive my pun, quite polarizing.
SPEAKER_01:You're just staring at me, waiting for me to laugh at your joke. Mission accomplished, great joke.
SPEAKER_00:And not in a person-to-person way, though I do think that's also true. But I mean snow is either delightful or horrible. It's either charming and romantic, or it's dangerous and life-taking. This early film shows a very innocent, joyous scene. Again, it literally captures a bunch of adults acting like kids and throwing snowballs at each other, which is very charming because they're all dressed up in old-timey clothes. But as we've talked about at length during this series, it's also incredibly dangerous, and for many reasons.
SPEAKER_01:Don't we know somebody that got in trouble for putting a big like rocks and snowballs and then throwing them?
SPEAKER_00:We do know, but we shall not reveal their identity.
SPEAKER_01:Was it you?
SPEAKER_00:It was not me. We've talked a lot on this series about many different films, especially films that were very relevant to the topics we were talking about.
SPEAKER_01:Or ones that I just like.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but there's a few that didn't come up organically in conversation, and I think that they are worth mentioning.
SPEAKER_01:It's never stopped me before.
SPEAKER_00:The first is Troll Hunter from 2010.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, great movie.
SPEAKER_00:Which is a Norwegian fantasy found footage film about trolls. It's a really good film that demonstrates the intersection of mythology, winter monsters, and fantasy. I love this movie.
SPEAKER_01:You love trolls.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if I love trolls, but this movie I love what I really do love is an effective found footage film that has CGI. That's like a little niche that I'm really into.
SPEAKER_01:Also, it's very kaiju adjacent.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:They're mountain-sized.
SPEAKER_00:So you like trolls because they're kaiju adjacent?
SPEAKER_01:Those trolls, yes. I don't like the trolls from Troll 2.
SPEAKER_00:What's Troll Two?
SPEAKER_01:From the series Troll? I haven't seen the first I think I saw the first troll, but I can't even remember it. But Troll 2 is pretty famous for being like for being known as one of the worst movies ever made. It's one of those that's so bad it's good.
SPEAKER_00:What about those little trolls we had as kids?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, you mean trolls?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, with the hair that would like stand straight up. Yeah, they're called trolls. I loved those. They have little gems in their bellies. Maybe we should get get one of those. Maybe we should start collecting those again.
SPEAKER_01:But Troll Hunter, great movie, and takes place in frigid Norway. So yeah, I'd say this is uh a a great I'd say that's a great winter cryptid.
SPEAKER_00:Stephen King's Storm of the Century is a limited television series written by Stephen King. In this case, the story was not based on a novel by King. He actually wrote the screenplay.
SPEAKER_01:Doesn't he still hate it?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if he hates it. I love it. He's grumpy. We can't always base everything on what his whims are.
SPEAKER_01:But he direct he directed this, yeah?
SPEAKER_00:No, he wrote it. He just wrote it.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So as soon as it got put in someone else's hands, then he hates it.
SPEAKER_00:It's three episodes that originally aired on February 14th, 15th, and 18th in 1999. And I remember when they were premiering and my family was watching them live.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:A massive winter storm traps the residents of Little Tall Island, a small isolated island off the coast of the US. Maine. As with all Stephen King works. As the storm hits, a mysterious stranger named Andre Lenoge walks into town and commits a brutal murder, then calmly allows himself to be arrested. From his jail cell, Lenoge begins to demonstrate that he knows everyone's darkest secrets. He claims to be something ancient and powerful, and he issues a chilling ultimatum to the town. Give me what I want, and I'll go away. Refuse, and I will destroy you all.
SPEAKER_01:But what he wants is quite the cost.
SPEAKER_00:Indeed. A conundrum. The storm intensifies, cutting off all help, and the town is forced to decide whether survival is worth moral collapse.
SPEAKER_01:They don't even have um YouTube.
SPEAKER_00:Storm of the Century is brilliant to me because it poses a moral question that is very difficult to answer. And I think that's what makes it kind of like forever, evergreen for humanity. But also, you know, it goes really well in the isolation horror uh topic because this whole town just becomes totally trapped and encased in snow, and there's no way for anybody to leave or do anything, right? Snow becomes like a really big character in the story.
SPEAKER_01:It's a great watch.
SPEAKER_00:You liked it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I'm I'm honestly surprised that they didn't remake it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it was only made in 1999.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but they remake movies made in 2008 now.
SPEAKER_00:So sad.
SPEAKER_01:The first cre the first iteration of um Stephen King's It got has got remade, and that also was a technically a miniseries.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a really good point.
SPEAKER_01:And boy, was that a moneymaker.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, this is one where I it feels it does feel very much like it was made in 1999, which is charming, but I think it's like an SD TV movie and could be really cool if it was shot more cinematically now.
SPEAKER_01:So oh, it was never a book.
SPEAKER_00:No.
SPEAKER_01:I see.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It wouldn't be a winter horror episode if I didn't talk about the thing.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And I have a big announcement that you already know. If you beat the game, I finally beat the thing video game just in time for this final recording of this episode. And a great, a great time. Highly recommended for anybody who loves the world of the thing, has a nostalgia factor for this old, you know, third person style of game. It was so much fun, and it really fleshed out the mythos of the thing, which was highly unexpected. Normally these games are just skin deep in lore, and then they just throw normal video game mechanics at you. And yeah, this this was not immune to that. There was a big chunk of it where it gets just a bit too shooter with Gunsy, but still, like the the in the finale when you fight the boss, which is just a big you know, once the thing has enough biomass where it just stops hiding and just comes in full force. Right. It's it was cool. I liked it. Uh my own my only criticism was that felt a bit too influenced by Half-Life.
SPEAKER_00:Um that's another game.
SPEAKER_01:That is another game, and a very popular one at that.
SPEAKER_00:I see.
SPEAKER_01:It's one thing if you rip off the little guys, but you can't rip off the greats.
SPEAKER_00:I understand.
SPEAKER_01:In terms of making the same frickin' thing.
SPEAKER_00:So, but overall, you enjoyed it. What's your rating out of seven?
SPEAKER_01:Out of seven, I give it a six point one.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, that's pretty good.
SPEAKER_01:It was a great it was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I will say, you know, I'm someone that's not very good at video games.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know that that's true.
SPEAKER_01:I'm just way better than you, but that's still on the spectrum, I'm terrible at video games.
SPEAKER_00:For the amount of time you put in, you take it to be a little bit better.
SPEAKER_01:You would think it's it's quite the hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's very disappointing.
SPEAKER_01:Uh regardless, I beat this game without needing to like look up any guides.
SPEAKER_00:That's nice.
SPEAKER_01:And I cannot tell you the last time that I played a single player game without having to look something up.
SPEAKER_00:A little bit of a confidence boost.
SPEAKER_01:I I think it speaks more to the game design. Like if you just follow the game, it's like it's like Mario. Like there's no like the old style Mario games, there's no question about what I should do. It's just can I do it? So many games now have convoluted map design or they don't really show you you know where to go or whatnot. This was always clear without shoving in your face. So sometimes you had to explore a little bit, but I never felt like I was aimlessly wandering. I felt like I was the guy exploring the facility, finding the things so that I could do the things.
SPEAKER_00:Very cool. It was fun. Yeah. Is there snow in the forest?
SPEAKER_01:There is the whole northern part of the map is snowy. It's above the tree line. So yes, it's it's covered in snow. You need the warm suit if you don't want to freeze to death.
SPEAKER_00:It's the same thing for Breath of the Wild.
SPEAKER_01:What, the warm suit?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you can't go into the snowy regions, you die.
SPEAKER_01:Does yours require a pelt from every animal?
SPEAKER_00:No, not from every animal.
SPEAKER_01:Because that's what the warm suit is.
SPEAKER_00:That feels very specific.
SPEAKER_01:Sure does. Forest, great game. Talk about isolationist horror.
SPEAKER_00:Talk about hours and hours and hours.
SPEAKER_01:It's so fun.
SPEAKER_00:Before we end this series, we need to take a moment for Yurtsy. Yurtsy is an ice mummy. Yurtsy the Iceman is a naturally mummified human who was discovered in September of 1991 by hikers in the Yurtsal Alps on the border between present-day Italy and Austria.
SPEAKER_01:That's how we got his name?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Radiocarbon dating shows he lived around 3,350 and 3,100 BCE during the Copper Age.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, a great year.
SPEAKER_00:He was approximately 45 years old at death. He was about 160 centimeters tall and weighed an estimated 50 kilograms, which I converted for you, which meant he was about 5'3 and 110 pounds. His body was preserved by ice, along with clothing and equipment, including a copper axe, flint tools, a bow, arrows, and a fur and hide outfit.
SPEAKER_01:You gotta upgrade the copper axe to the steel axe if you want to be able to fell trees easily.
SPEAKER_00:In the forest?
SPEAKER_01:No, in Stardew Valley.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's right. Medical examinations revealed tattoos, evidence of arthritis, intestinal parasites, and lactose intolerance. Imaging and forensic analysis indicate he died from a flint arrowhead embedded in his left shoulder that caused fatal blood loss, likely during a violent encounter. His remains are currently housed in the South Tyrell Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, where they are kept in controlled conditions for preservation. The discovery of Yurtszi was rare and important because he is an exceptionally well-preserved human from the Copper Age, a period from which intact human remains are extremely uncommon. His natural mummification and ice preserved not only his body, but also his clothing, tools, and weapons, which allowed for direct study of his daily life, technology, health, and common diets around 330 BCE. Ertzy provided the oldest known examples of tattoos, one of the earliest preserved copper tools, and clear evidence of interpersonal violence in prehistoric Europe.
SPEAKER_01:It's kind of surprising.
SPEAKER_00:Because most human remains from this era are skeletonized and separated from their material culture, Ertzy offers a uniquely complete snapshot of history. So while ice mummies are incredibly rare, there have been a few other discoveries around the globe. The Inca ice mummies, from Peru, Argentina, and Chile, were discovered on high Andean peaks. These were children who were preserved by extreme cold after being ritually sacrificed between the 1400s and early 1500s. The most famous Juanita, who was discovered in 1995, is one of the best preserved mummies ever found, with intact organs, hair, and clothing. The Siberian ice mummies from Russia were members of the Perserk culture from between 500 and 300 BCE. They were buried in frozen tombs. These mummies are notable for their preserved soft tissue, elaborate tattoos, clothing, horses, and grave goods. There's also the Greenland Norse mummies, which were frozen remains from medieval Norse settlements around the 14th and 15th century, which were preserved in permafrost. The Keila Kitsok mummies from Greenland, which were eight naturally mummified Inuit individuals dating to around 1475 common era, preserved by cold and dry conditions with well-preserved skin and clothing. But Ertsey remains unique because he is the oldest naturally preserved ice mummy in Europe, and was found with an unusually complete set of tools and clothing. Again, he kind of gave this really never before seen look at the copper era, and that was really cool for scientists. Yeah. Yeah. Snow, ice, and the cold create the perfect backdrop for horror. It makes sense that so many cultures created stories and mythologies to describe and understand the natural world around them, especially when it came to trying to wrap their heads around the cruelty of winter. Winter makes everything harder. Isolation in winter can be crippling. Snow can literally cut you off from the outside world. We've talked a lot about history and films in this series, but some of the most influential horror novels of all time also play with this trope. This is setting aside the shining and who goes there, which we already talked about.
SPEAKER_01:We have.
SPEAKER_00:In 1818, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was released. There are very key moments in this book that unfold in the Swiss Alps and the Arctic, where Victor and the creature pursue each other across glaciers and polar seas. The use of winter here in these scenes is very symbolic and it creates this very unique and I don't know, sort of in your brain visually rich bookend for the for the novel.
SPEAKER_01:Which I gotta say was the best part of the 2025 Frankenstein movie.
SPEAKER_00:2024.
SPEAKER_01:Really?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, it just Oh no, no, I'm right. It's 2026 now.
SPEAKER_01:You doof? Woo!
SPEAKER_00:Edgar Allen Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which came out in 1838. This is kind of this strange mix of sea adventure and horror, but it's set in icy waters towards the Antarctic, where isolation plays a really, really big role. In 1872, Sheridan Lafanu wrote Carmilla. This is not like purely a winter novel, but similar to Frankenstein, it uses snow during key moments, which seem to kind of punctuate the emotions that we're meant to feel on those scenes.
SPEAKER_01:What's Carmilla about?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you've never read Carmilla?
SPEAKER_01:No. It's a sequel to something or prequel, right?
SPEAKER_00:No, Carmilla is a novella. It is like one of the earlier vampire works. There was some earlier works from 1818 and 1819.
SPEAKER_01:But it has nothing to do with Brom Stoker's Dracula.
SPEAKER_00:It predates Bromstoker's Dracula.
SPEAKER_01:But it's not a prequel to Brom. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:It's a lesbian vampire novella from the 1800s. I have a copy if you'd like to read it.
SPEAKER_01:I don't don't mind if I do.
SPEAKER_00:And of course, in 1897, Brom Stoker wrote Dracula.
SPEAKER_01:With very little Arctic engagement.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, but Jonathan Harker does journey through the Carpathian Mountains, which Alan and I have done.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but he's a frickin' tool.
SPEAKER_00:And it's set in winter, and there's wolves and snowdrifts and all sorts of kind of unruly winter cruelty that play into those scenes. There's winter scenes in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw from 1898, which kind of play into the claustrophobia of Blind Manor, and Snow again traps the governess with her fears. Again, it's like used as a tool for isolation and desolation. 1936 gave us H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, which is set entirely in Antarctica. M. R. James's Count Magnus and other ghost stories, which came out between 1904 and 1925, includes snow-covered graveyards, frozen roads, bleak northern landscapes. The snow definitely plays a repeatable character in his work. The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood from 1910, again, another problematic guy, him and uh HP Lovecraft here. But they did set the scene for better or worse for some modern-day horror tropes. The Wendigo is set in the frozen Canadian wilderness. And finally, Samuel Taylor Cooleridge's The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner from 1798 is not necessarily horror, but it plays a lot with this kind of ice-bound imagery that we've talked a lot about on this series, especially in the survival episode.
SPEAKER_01:Not a book, but I was reminded of a movie that uh does play very well on both isolationist horror and supernatural. Not the entire movie takes place in the winter, but uh it's definitely like uh a main theme of the movie where the main character is isolated from like the community, and then like the winter really isolates them. Sure. And this was the 2025 Voices Carry.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, you really tricked me on that one.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, it's a great movie. I recommend it to just about everyone and to all you out there, go go watch it.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Once it once it's somewhere, we'll let you know for sure. To be somewhere soon, as they say. Well, thank you guys so much. This was, again, really fun. Sometimes going into these really, really big, broad topics can be a bit daunting, but we had a lot of fun putting this together and we ended up watching so many fun winter horror movies, as Alan said at the beginning of this episode, while it is snowing and wintry and cold outside in New York, so it was kind of fun for us to live in the moment for the past four weeks.
SPEAKER_01:And again, it it just makes it feel appropriate and seasonal. So for for lack of a better word, it makes you feel festive.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And you know, it's even scarier than winter landscapes.
SPEAKER_01:Ice.
SPEAKER_00:Ice and living in, you know, Nazi America isn't great.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they kind of go hand in hand these days, and uh that sucks.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and we definitely stand with all of the people in Minnesota who are boycotting and protesting and resisting. And I'm, you know, we're bracing for impact because there's reports every day of more and more ice activity in New York City. So everyone out there, do everything you can do to resist safely. Uh, and if anyone, I've I said this last episode, but if anybody has any great resources or programs that are looking for donations of food or money, please let us know so we can shout that out on this podcast too. But what I was going to say is what's scarier than winter landscapes is puppets. Next time on Lunatics Radio Hour.
