Episode 191 - The History of Birds in Horror

From ravens and vultures to killer flocks and supernatural omens, birds have played a major role in horror for decades. In this episode of Lunatics Radio Hour, Abby sits down with Kate Rotunda to explore the history of birds in horror and why these animals continue to symbolize death, fear, and chaos across film and folklore. 

Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. 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.

Transcript

Pigeons, Pest Bias, And Sources

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. My name is Abby Branker, and I am sitting here again with our friend Kate Rotunda. Hello. Welcome, Kate. Thank you for having me. I am so excited to talk to you about the intersection of birds and horror today. And I thought about this topic for you because I know that you love birds.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

I do like birds, specifically pigeons very much. They are one of my favorites. I like any animal that's considered a pest.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yeah, I love that for you. And I'm sure you guys know Kate at this point. She has been on the podcast a few times, but she also writes pretty frequently for us at lunaticsproject.com. So head to our website and click on articles if you want to read some more from Kate. Tell us, Kate, before we get into everything that we're going to talk about today, which I'm really excited. We're going to get into horror movies and horror literature where birds are really important. We're going to talk about different cultural superstitions and beliefs assigned to birds. But tell us why you love pigeons, tell us why you love pigeons.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Pigeons specifically, I love because they are a creature that has been so pushed to the outskirt of society. But they are highly intelligent. They are beautiful, in my opinion. I think they're adorable. But my love for pigeons started when I made a short film a while ago about the use of pigeons in war. They were used as messengers and they were used to carry very important messages. And I just learned that they're super intelligent. And we used to have pets with them. We used to train them and they just kind of got pushed to the side and they're everywhere. And I just encourage you, especially live if you live in New York, to just take a look at pigeons. I think they're adorable and they're fun. And domestic pigeons are very sweet, and I don't think they deserve the hate that they get.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Okay, answer this for me though. And I'm not trying to hate on pigeons. Why can they not make a nest?

SPEAKER_01 2:06

That I don't know. I think that's actually adorable that they're so bad at making nests. So bad. I like, I don't know why that is. It's so cute. I'm sure there's a reason behind it. It is so funny to me because they're so smart in so many other ways, like, especially like honing pigeons and like all of that. Like they can tell the directions of things and they have an internal like magnet to the earth, and they just put down like one stick and they're like, this is good enough. This is a nest.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

It's like a pack of gum and a stick, and they're like, this is.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

And you know what? There's still so many of them. So clearly, yeah, it's working out.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

They don't need it. Okay, so let's acknowledge our sources before we get into the history. A birdwatching.com article, Birds in Ancient Cultures from Myths to Symbolism. A bird spot article, what does it mean if a bird flies into your house? A PBS.org article on Crowfax, a history.com article by Christopher Klein, Hitchcock's The Birds was partly inspired by real life events, and of course, Wikipedia and IMDB helped us out a little bit today. Alright, so Kate, first to kind of set the scene. Yes. I'm gonna hand you the mic.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Okay, so first, since we're talking about birds in horror and movies, I want to give a little bit about birds as omens. There is a practice called ornithomancy, which is the practice of reading omens from the actions of birds, which was originally called augury in ancient Rome as well. Uh so basically what they used to do is they would use the flight patterns and cries from birds as a sign from the future, or in Greek in Roman history, a sign from the gods. So augurs used to believe that we could use birds to tell the future because they thought that their ability to fly and their closeness to the sky meant that they were close to the gods. So one thing they used to do was they would stand in one spot facing east and look to see which way the birds flew. If they were flying to the right, it meant good things to come. If they were flying to the left, it was meant as a warning or to be cautious. Um birds were also often just associated with different religious figures. Um, different gods had different birds, one of the most well-known being Athena. But yeah, basically in ancient Rome and Greece, they just had this belief that because birds were in the sky, that they were messengers from gods, they were spies from gods, that they could tell the future because they just had access to a part of the world that we did not. And I love this.

Augury And Birds As Omens

SPEAKER_00 4:18

This is my favorite part about this podcast when you find something, which is all the time, but when you find something, this like belief, right, that birds are able to bring messages or communicate with other worlds or gods or whatever, and then you find it repeated in so many different cultures and time periods across history. So I want to talk about a few other examples of that that I am particularly called to. So the first is the Morgan, which is one of my favorite deities of all time and one that I spend a lot of time thinking about casually. But the Morgan is a Celtic goddess. She's very heavily associated with war. And I also love to have a female goddess of war because it's it's not as prevalent, yes. So the Morgan is less concerned with the glory of war and more a representative of those who are fated to die in battle. She favors cleverness, she is a goddess of prophecy, sometimes described as both a warrior and a witch. Legend says that she would appear in the dreams of warriors, predicting their deaths, right? So if you had a dream about the Morgan the night before battle, it wasn't looking great for you. It became practice to leave the bodies of the dead on the battlefield for a day to allow Morgan's crows to come and collect them, which is actually somewhat similar to Odin's ravens in Norse mythology. The Morgan can be likened to the Valkyries in Norse mythology as well. Warriors would pray to her to either protect them before battle or to sway her to take the lives of their foes instead of them. Some look at her as strictly a protective entity rather than a violent one. She protects individuals until they can fulfill their destinies. Right? So it's almost like this idea of when it is your time, when it is, you know, it's like a fate sort of sort of idea. It was also believed that she could stop protecting those who have wronged her and let their death come early. Sometimes the Morgan is presented as three separate entities, all making up different parts of her. Three goddess sisters named Bob, Maka, and Neman are sometimes referred to as the trifecta that make up the Morgana. She is heavily associated with crows, like I said, and it was said to be an omen of death for you or a loved one if you were to see a crow flying. Sometimes the Morgan is said to have transformed into a bird when she needs to escape threats or danger. With a lot of bird folklore, there's like this assumption that the bird can travel again between the world of the living and the world of the dead, or some kind of greater spirit realm, and this is an example of that. I also want to call back to an episode I did with my friend Anastasia Garcia, where we talked about Mexico's La Lachuza. So listen back to episode 146 for more on that with Anastasia, but essentially La Lachuza is a witch that can turn into an owl. And it it kind of acts as like a safety allegory for kids. It's trying to deter them from staying out late at night. So it's a little bit different. Yeah. But from Thunderbirds and Native American culture to banshees taking the form of a bird in Irish folklore, to the walk walk in Filipino folklore, a bird-like figure that symbolizes death, it's just they're so rampant, right, across all of these different cultures. We could do a whole podcast with different episodes every week all about bird folklore. And very often, and not always, but very often they're associated with something dark, if not with death itself. Yeah. There's also some cool examples from ancient Egypt. Toth, who was the god of writing, the moon, and wisdom, was often showed with the head of an eebus. Horus, another iconic Egyptian god, was visualized as a falcon. And I think a lot of us are probably familiar with like the tomb imagery, right? And kind of like the hierarchy. Yeah, exactly. And you see like a lot of like humanoids with bird heads. In Mayan culture, one of their gods was referred to as the hummingbird of war. Even though hummingbirds are small, they were seen as fierce and active fighters.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Yeah, and I think like similar to like what I said before, I think it's interesting that there are so many gods associated with birds. Like you said, so yeah, like Odin is said to be accompanied by two ravens named Hugin and Munin, meaning mind and will. They would fly around and report back to him what they had seen. There's also the legend of Prometheus being punished by Zeus by being tied to uh being chained to a rock and having his liver eaten out by eagles every night. And I think just, I don't know if there's the actual history here, but I believe that maybe this came up a lot because birds just have access to this part of the world that in ancient times we had no access to. The sky was seen as like where the gods lived, like the sky above us that we could not reach is where the gods are. So seeing a creature that could soar through the sky and just being that high up, I can see being like maybe they are in communication with God, or maybe they are the eyes of God.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Yeah. And having this ability to move and fly feels very elevated too. Yeah. Especially eagles and falcons and you know, and these big impressive birds. I think you can understand why like the thunderbird is something in Native American culture, right? It's it's grand and stunning to see.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Yeah. So along with the folklore of birds, there's also a lot of lasting bad omens associated with different types of birds. Superstitions that have existed for years and years. So I'm gonna get into some of them. One of them is a bird flying into your home means that someone will become sick and die. This is a common superstition, especially in Celtic cultures where birds such as blackbirds or ravens are linked to illness and mortality. Some of the more specifics of this superstition is if a bird flies into a home, circles a room, then lands on the back of a chair, the next person to sit in the chair will die. Um scary. Which, like, just throw the chair together, yeah. Like get rid of the chair. Even a bird tapping on the window or attempting to enter your house can be a bad sign. Also, the larger the bird, the larger the possibility of something bad happened. This is thought to be a belief stemming from the fact that the larger the bird, the more their wings flapping will cause greater damage. Um, and just I think physically the bigger the omen. I tried to find some origin here, and I think it's just that birds are often carriers of illness. And sometimes, and I found this a lot with some of these omens where it's just like, um, I don't know where the superstition came from. It's just something we believed.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

It's hard to trace this stuff at a certain point. Yeah.

The Morrígan, Crows, And Death

SPEAKER_01 10:16

But some of it got so intense that this could go as far as people won't have pictures of birds in their house or wallpaper with birds in it. Because that just bird symbols being in their home meant that that could cause a death or bring illness. Wow. And that I don't think has, I think if it's a crow or raven, it could be more bad luck, but I don't think it has a specific bird associated to it. Just if there's a bird in your house, it's linked to bad luck. Another common bird omen is that crows and ravens are signs of death. Often people will say if you see a crow or a raven, it means you or a loved one is going to die. This omen is less specific, just if you see a large blackbird, someone's gonna die in your life. Could be you. Just keep a look out. This is actually believed to stem from the fact that these birds are just black. Honestly, just the fact that they are large blackbirds, just the darkness associated with them, that black is often associated with death and mourning. And also the fact that these birds are carrier birds. So they are constantly surrounded by death and feeding on the dead. So I think that's that uh feeds into the omen as well, that that bird is looking for death. So if a carrier bird is circling you or near you, it may mean that you are close to death yourself.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that makes a lot of sense, right? Because you have this like pretty iconic imagery of these birds like circling as they prepare to strike.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, so not only aesthetically with their like darkness, but just the fact that they feed on the dead and want to be around the dead. So if they're around you, you're you're dead.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

You're almost dead.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

And then another interesting one I found is um magpies are considered bad luck because apparently when Jesus was crucified, two birds landed on his cross. One was a dove and one was a magpie, and the dove wept for Jesus and the magpie did not. And that then led to um magpies being considered bad luck.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah, little like outcasts almost. It's like we're punishing them because they didn't shed a tear.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

And then doves, um, I guess were then considered peaceful and elevated, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yeah. Fascinating. Bird politics. Yeah. I also want to talk a little bit about the psychology here, and just very briefly, I just want to touch on this. Again, we are not doctors, but I do think there's something really poignant about we just like outlined so quickly so many different cultures and stories and superstitions and associated fears and bad omens with birds, right? I think there's a little bit to say about the psychology of that. It's not quite like Uncanny Valley, but there is like a layer of uncanny here because of a few things. One, I think there's just with animals in general, humans, especially like ancient humans who don't quite understand the science to everything yet. If you think about the way some of these birds communicate with each other, right, which is very obvious. You were sending me TikTok videos of like ravens and crows, right? If you think about how some of them can parrot back our language, I think there's something that feels uneasy about birds if you don't quite understand all of that.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

And they have like a there are, I guess I'll say this. I think all animals have this ability to communicate that humans don't understand, but I think in birds it feels really obvious. Yeah. And so it almost feels like, oh, all of these people are talking about me. It's something like that, right? So I think that's something that can make people uneasy. There's also this, I think, inherent fear of like a big mass. And so a lot of the times in horror movies you see like a swarm of birds. It's rarely like, you know, we have the raven, which is singular, but generally a lot of the time, it's a swarm of birds, a mass of birds, and that's also something that I think feels inherently uncomfortable for us.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Yeah, and descending from like almost like having the higher ground.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

But like just descending upon you. But yeah, we with the way birds communicate, it's also all the time. Yeah. Like I can't think of the last time I've been outside and not heard a bird call of some kind. Absolutely. And yeah, with crows and ravens, not a lot of people know, but they can speak, they mimic human. And it I highly recommend you look up videos of ravens and crows speaking because it's really interesting because they can very well mimic a person's voice, but still this like gutter roll sound. So creepy. And it's not like parrots where parrots understand what they're saying, crows and ravens just do it to mimic. So yeah, I do think it's this terrifying thing, and like not knowing that, imagine being like someone in the forest, like before knowing that ravens could speak and you hear a voice from the woods. Yeah. And even owls, like the hooting of an owl. It's they're also often predators, birds. So it's this not only like a predator nearby, but also this creature that has a greater understanding of all aspects of like the forest it's in, the above, the below, everything. And I do think they're just like very majestic creatures, but there is something scary about just the idea of a bird c swooping down from the sky, and then yeah, they're pack animals kind of at times. They are in huge swarms and you see them everywhere, and it's like it is a little chilling. Unnerving.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Yeah. We had an episode a long time ago with our friend Bob Don, and Bob had a podcast called Bob's Short Story Hour, but he came on, we met him in person one time, and he lives in a different state, and it was a joy to record with him. But he had just come. The reason why he was staying with us was because he went to this like tracker school sort of a thing in New Jersey for like three weeks, where he was just like in the woods learning about like animals and nature and survival and things like that. And one of the things he learned and was explaining to us on this episode, which is somewhere in the lunatics archives, if you want to find it, I recommend there's also some good ghost stories in that is this idea that birds, I think specifically he was saying crows. So, say a crow has a way to communicate with another crow to say, like there's a nuance in the way they communicate to say there's you know, whatever, I'm gonna simplify it. There's a sound for there's a man in the forest, which is different from there's a man in the forest with a gun. Yeah. And the level of like intellect associated with birds. There's the story, right? I I think we talked about this on that episode. There was like this little girl, maybe Alan had heard this story, who had like a new camera and lost a lens or a lens cap or something, and like the crow brought it to her front porch. Oh, yeah. Like there's this level of intelligence that I think scares us as humans.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Because you're like, what the fuck? Like it's a bird, it's so small, its brain must be so small. But they're there's like empathy in them and understanding and nuance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Yeah. And I think that crows can hold grudges. They also really like people and will bring them gifts. Yeah. If they enjoy something that they've done, they like shiny things. But I think, yeah, it's a mix of their intelligence and then I don't know why it just it really gets back to me where I'm just like, they're in the sky. Like we can go in planes, but it's so different. Like, oh yeah.

Gods With Wings: Egypt, Norse, Maya

SPEAKER_00 16:41

I think to be a bird, like to be a bird soaring around must be the best. Yeah. The best version. Like, that's like if you believe in some kind of reincarnation theory where you come back better each time, that's the highest. That's nirvana. Yeah. You are you're just like a you're a pigeon in New York with your one stick and you're you're better than we are right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Eat a French fry around.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

But of course, all of this mythology and history and superstition is perfect fodder for horror. So we're going to talk a little bit about the intersection of birds, knowing some of this again, we went we went through that really quickly, very high level, because we we are not a team of researchers, but knowing that there's so much foundational mythology, right, for horror to to play with here. And I just want to quote Hitchcock really briefly here because I think this concept is really pivotal to the intersection of birds and horror. And so he's quoted as saying, ordinary things cause extraordinary terror. And I think that's something that we're gonna see a lot with birds as we continue to talk through.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

So, yeah, birds are prevalent in a lot of horror literature and films, often as like what we spoke about before, different omens, different birds having different omens, just often causes of death, uh, signs of death, dread. Kind of I think it also plays into a little bit of like a stalking thing with some horror movies where like birds stalk people. But one of the most famous ones is um in Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. I think that is one of the most famous uses of a bird as a source of dread and as a bad omen, if we go uh back into history looking at the beginning of birds in literature.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Absolutely. Yeah, so we have to talk about the raven because I mean, beyond how important it is to this topic, obviously, I think I'll speak for both of us that we are big Ed Grow Allen Poe stands. So, like we said, even before Poe's poem, ravens are already associated with messages from the beyond in death. In biblical folklore, Norse and Celtic mythologies, ravens are often associated with prophecy in the afterlife. So I think it makes sense why Poe would pick the Raven to be part of the poem, right? But the thing about Poe's poem that I think there's a little bit of a swivel point after I believe the raven. This is like an unresearched theory that I'm putting out. Sure. I'm sure it could be right or wrong. Like when I think about some of the the horror literature and films we're gonna talk about, it feels like after a certain time period, birds become literal. And before that time period, they're almost like metaphors.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

And to me, the the raven is a little bit of a swivel point because the raven is a literal raven. Yes. Now there's some interpretations maybe that the raven is a hallucination or something, but he's not a symbol. He's not just like, oh, there's a raven outside, and I know that there's a funeral tomorrow. Like the raven is a character in the piece. Oh yeah. Which is, I think, something that's a little bit new at the time that the poem was written. That's my high-level uh hypothesis. But I think the poem really begs the question: is this like sort of pecking and at the window, like this symptom of the character's like mental state? Or is this raven like attracted to the death in the space? You know, like which which elephant first. Yeah. So The Raven was published by Edgar Allan Poe in January of 1845. And it really made Poe a household name and like skyrocketed his fame during his life. Now, that did not translate financially for him. He was not immediately wealthy. And, you know, we actually did a whole series on the life and death of Poe, which you can go back and listen to because his death is so fitting for his works and his life and all these things, which is sad, but it it there's something about it that feels a little bit mystical, even because of how it all worked out, even though, again, he reached kind of like this new level of stardom during his lifetime. I'm gonna quote from Poe here quote, I have made no money. I am as poor now as I ever was in my life, except in hope, which is by no means bankable, end quote.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Every artist relates to that.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Yeah, truly. While the Raven is the most iconic, it's not the only example of birds in horror or gothic literature. So Wuthering Heights is another great example, is written by Emily Bronte. The Bronte sisters are my favorite writers, so I'm just gonna put that out there. I do have an affinity for Wuthering Heights and uh the work of Charlotte Bronte as well. But 1847, Wuthering Heights is published. It's her only novel. Again, to me, it's one of the best that exists. It's set on the Yorkshire moors. And I want to deviate quickly just to define the term storm birds. Storm birds is a poetic term for a few different types of birds that tend to herald storms or travel with storms, right? They're certainly seen as harbingers of death and bad omens because they naturally organically travel with storms, move before storms.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yeah. So it seems like they're almost bringing it with them. Exactly.

Superstitions: Birds In Homes And Windows

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Even the title of Wuthering Heights brings to mind the approaching storm, and the whole thing feels like this allegory or not, you know, metaphor, right? There's so much storm imagery that's being invoked. So much of how Bronte writes centers around this imagery, right? Everything is howling, shrieking winds, rattling windows. It's all kind of like this oncoming onslaught of weather. And there's so much about the way that Catherine and Heathcliff move through the novel that mimics this idea of heralding the storm or stormbirds.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

A very poetic, I feel like, and there's birds in the novel, but it's a very Very poetic metaphor about birds and the superstitious history of birds that's very obvious in Wuthering Heights, but it's starkly different than the Raven, which is a literal bird in the window, like right. And so it's a different version of sort of the same historic folklore. Another more like relevant to horror example is Shirley Jackson's The Lovely House or Summer People, where birds are really clearly meant to be symbols of dread. So that's another fun one.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

I think another thing, and this is also just like a theory of mine.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Yes, love.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Is that birds are often used in horror in a way where they're acting wrong. Like something's wrong with them, or not wrong, but like they're stagnant. They're near you, they're doing something. And I think it could be true of a lot of different animals, but birds especially, because we see them so often, we see them everywhere. We see patterns of theirs. Like birds, I think more than any other animal have distinct patterns. So I think they're often used in horror, in my opinion. Maybe because like to see a bird do something weird is so startling. Because I think you also have this association that they have this connection to the earth, to the wind, to everything. So it feels like maybe something's wrong in the air. Almost like how animals act before an earthquake or a natural disaster. Just a bird doing something weird is scary. Like it's dread, like there's a lot of dread there. Like birds gathering in a house. Like, same with like the saying again, they're like carrier. Like, if you see ravens around like an abandoned house, like perched on a house, like you might be like, is there something dead in there? Like, is something wrong with this? Why is it attracting this weirdness in animals?

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

And I think just like the fluttering of birds also catches our attention more than like maybe the scampering of a squirrel. So, like seeing a bird fly off weird or fly near you, like something just is wrong in nature there. And I think birds are just a good example of that.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Yeah, you actually just reminded me. This is an experience I've had, but I don't know if you have. You drive a lot more than me, so you might have. Like driving down the road and having like a huge fucking hawk come right in front of your car. And there's these videos. I my TikTok feed is quite uh supernatural in nature. Sure. But there's a lot of times where you're scrolling and there's like this creepy thing moving down the road at night, and you're like, oh, it's an owl. But if you don't know that, it like it's it looks like this like ghostly entity in like the car lights, even just the fact that vultures, right, like are attracted to the dead, like that alone, there's so much there that we can just like we could interpret in our own ways and be aware of. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

And there's lots of animals that eat dead bodies. Like that's common monarch butterflies eat dead bodies.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Whoa, really?

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Yeah. But it's something we're not it I guess with birds, it's more obvious, maybe because of the the way they do it or just flying off with a dead body, or just the study of it. I feel like out of all the animals that eat dead bodies, like we know about birds the most.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Maybe because it is back to the Prometheus legend too, of him them eating his liver or old burials where like they were pecked apart by birds. I guess there's like also coyotes and stuff like that. But just something that we see more is a bird with like a dead rodent or swooping down to get an animal or a fish in the ocean, or like seagulls like swooping down on the ocean. And I think we just see it more and have no physical connection to it in the same way that we do like animals that walk like us or on the land.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Right. It's so foreign to us.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so like the raven, there's really like two iconic pieces of bird horror. Yes. One is the raven, and the other is the bird.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Is the birds. Um, so many people know the movie The Birds, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. But what a lot of people don't know is that it was actually inspired by a real life event. In part. It was in part inspired by a real life event. On August 18th, 1961, in Capitola, California, around 2:30 a.m., a huge swarm of birds began descending from the sky, crashing into the cars and buildings of the town. They flew into people's roofs with such force that they woke up, like so many inhabitants who would come outside. And once they came outside, they would turn on their flashlights, but then which then attracted more birds into the beams of light. By the time pe most people got up in the morning, there were like hundreds of dead birds all over the street. I have a quote from George Demaiche, who was 21 years old living in Capitola, and he stated that when he came outside, he said, you couldn't see more than about 10 or 15 feet, and hundreds of these black birds were lying all over the streets. So they had come horrifying. They had come crashing down, but not all of them had died. It wasn't just like a like bomb into the ground. Uh, there were tons of living birds still around biting and attacking people. They were also carrying dead fish around, causing the whole town to smell of like frotting fish. Oh my god. Eventually, volunteers uh came out and put on gloves to protect from the pecking that was happening of these birds and tried to literally carry some of the live birds closer to the shore and like throw them off like into the shores because they thought it'd be easier for them to catch the wind, but the birds just kept coming back and being disoriented. Yeah. It is also said that it took most of the town all morning to clean up the dead birds that still remained. They said that lots of people came out to just like get rid of like a foot deep worth of dead birds.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

So reportedly Hitchcock was already working on a script for the birds based on a 1952 ri novella written by Daphne Dumorie. But he also was a frequent visitor of Capitola and heard the news of the attack very quickly from a local newspaper. And he then took the newspaper and used it as further research for the project. Of course.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

I mean, that's crazy. Like the like synchronicity of that whole thing is insane.

Why Birds Feel Uncanny

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Oh, yeah. Reportedly, I guess an interviewer asked him once if it was like a weird marketing technique or something like that. And he was like, nope, just like a good coincidence. But regarding this event, originally people of the town had no clue what caused the birds to do this. Some theorized that maybe it was a fog that disoriented them and sent them to the uh shore, but there was no fog at the time, really, and there was never a fog thick enough in that area. It wasn't until much later that the real reason was discovered. So this happened in 1961, this event. In 1991, a similar event occurred in Monterey Bay, which was close by, and researchers discovered that the birds had eaten anchovies with a demoic acid, which is, quote, a naturally occurring poison made by marine phytoplankton called pseudonichia. This acid can be known to cause disorientation, seizures, and death. So then, four years later in 1995, a study was published suggesting that this is what happened in Capitola and in Monterey Bay, but there was no actual physical evidence. It wasn't until 2012 when a study in the journal called Natural Geoscience released an analysis of the contents of zooplankton that had been collected and archived from Monterey Bay that proved that at least 79% of the plankton were affected by this acid. So this event happened in 1961 and no one, they just had no clue what happened. Imagine waking up one day, there's birds dive bombing all over your town, they're dead everywhere, they're pecking you, throwing off, and then no one gives you an explanation.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

No, it's this is the type of shit. Okay.

unknown 28:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

This is the type of shit. Like we did that episode a while ago on like the true life events that inspired the blob. Yeah. There's like weird pockets of history like this. Oh, yeah. And you're like, this thing happened. Nobody figured it out. And we just lived with it for 30 years where we didn't know what happened. And then of course we made horror shit about it. Of course. Like, but still, like what happened? Like, it's like bizarre like phenomena.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

I can't even I feel like if I were living in that town and these birds did that, and someone's like, oh, I guess fog confused them. I'd be like, this is a government cover-up. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_00 29:17

I'd be like, I'm moving. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

What are you talking about? Fog. Yeah. There's no fog. And even though there was, that doesn't explain anything. There's always fog. Yeah. Like it doesn't anything that's happened. So yeah, it wasn't until much later. And even then, it doesn't definitively prove it. It's just like a similar event that occurred. But yeah, basically, this like poison happened that caused them to become completely disoriented. But it is crazy. And another thing to add to like why birds can be scary is because they do especially seabirds and birds traveling north or south are in such huge groups and they feed together. So if they were the all eat this poisonous plankton, then they all do this and they all start acting like this. And it's just, I can't it's wild, man. I love pigeons, but if they all started dive bombing my car, I'd be a little upset.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah, no, it's crazy. It's wild. While the film was released in 1963, production actually began on The Birds in 1961. The film stars Tippi Hedron and Rod Taylor. Hedron plays Melanie Daniels, who arrives at Bodega Bay about an hour outside of San Francisco. The The Birds was Tippi Hedron's first film, and like what an introduction to the world of Hollywood.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Yeah, he I think he discovered her from a commercial she did, and there's a little Easter egg in the film. Towards the beginning of the film, if you've ever noticed a weird scene where Tippy Hendron is walking down the street and someone whistles at her and it felt unnecessary, that's because that's what happened in the commercial, and it's like a little Easter egg nod to how Hitchcock discovered her.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Yeah, wild. And it wasn't an easy set for her for many reasons. And again, lots more to say about this, but we're gonna keep it on the birds. Yes. So despite being promised that she would not have to interact with live birds, an onset decision was made to use real birds. And it was decided that the mechanical prop birds essentially wouldn't look real enough, right? It's kind of like the Jaws thing. Yeah. They they could afford birds and not a shark. So Hedrin was forced to film traumatic scenes in a traumatic way against her will, not what she had signed up for. The other fun fact that I like to mention about the birds, I think so much of the film's success, not so much, but an important element is the is the sound design. Yeah. There's something so grating and haunting about the soundtrack of the birds and their calls. In reality, the sound mixer actually combined bird calls with human screams to create a lot of that.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Well, I think that's interesting because like especially considering there's a connection between like birds and dinosaurs. But when you watch dinosaur films and they're like, oh, it's a mix of all these animals. But like, yeah, it's this I think what makes that movie scary is because yeah, they use the bird noises, which is a sound you're familiar with, but in an uncomfortable zone, and then mixed in with a sound you're not familiar with. So it creates this like eerie, yeah, almost supernatural sound for a not supernatural event.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Right. It's it's kind of uncanny. It's like you know what a bird sounds like, and this sounds like that, but it's something slightly off about it.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Yeah, and maybe you've never heard a bird that angry, so you're like, do they actually sound like that when they're attacking?

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Not to go too far into Tippy Hendron's uh abuse suffered on this set, but one scene in particular is the final scene of the movie where she is in the attic and it's swarming with birds. She's, I think, in a bedroom or an addict, it's swarming with birds. Originally, yes, they were supposed to use fake birds, but they ended up using real ones and no one told her until like just about the scene was about to film. She actually stated in an interview that live birds were thrown at her. Like crew members were off-screen holding birds and throwing them at her. Birds were loosely tied to her dress, which then couldn't escape, so they started pecking and attacking her.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Traumatic for the birds, too.

From Metaphor To Monster: Poe’s Raven

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Absolutely, complete animal abuse on this film as well. Yeah. She said it was she's quoted as saying it was brutal and ugly and relentless. The shooting of the scene lasted five days. By the end of it, a doctor told Hendron she was exhausted, the crew was exhausted, everyone was exhausted. The doctor told Hendron she needed to take like a break, and he basically had to force Hitchcock into allowing her to take a break from this. Yeah. But yeah, it's I mean, you've done your episode on Hitchcock, and the man is complicated. Yep. Does not have the best track record with actresses. Nope. This film, I hate to say it considering all the abuse, but it's so good. It's it's terrifying, it's visceral, it's it is it's crazy to watch. The scene where the kids are running. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah, there's something very primal about it. There's also something where there's like a subcategory brewing here that comes into play more with more modern films, but I do like I think you can take away from this movie if you so choose. It's not really explicit, but this almost like eco horror thing where it's like it's and I hate to reference the happening, but it has like this thing of like, oh, are we upsetting the balance of nature? Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that I think is gonna we're we see more and more now, and there's gonna be so much more of it, especially as we move into like deeper into global warming and and people are reacting to that. But this feels like a kind of an early you know precursor for that genre.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Okay, before we were recording, Kate started telling me this wild story about Tippi Hedrin. Yes, and I wanted you to save it for this moment.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Yes. So Tippy Hendron, essentially, apparently, Tippy Hendron and her husband, uh Noelle Marshall, who is the producer of The Exorcist, were went on a trip to Africa where they saw like a bunch of lions, tigers, and and a former game warden lived with some lions that he had like tamed, and they were like, oh my god, we should make a movie on lions. And so originally they wanted to rent Hollywood trained lions, but that like wasn't working out for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

But that would have been the smart way to do it.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

Yes. They then began the process of getting and raising their own pet lions in their home with their daughter, Molly Griffith.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Very lion, uh very tiger king of them.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Yes. So most of these lions were from like zoos, circuses, and private owners who just like couldn't deal with them anymore. There's pictures of them in their house, coming through the window, laying with them in bed, like all over the place. So they eventually wanted to make this movie called Vroar, which ended up taking 11 years to make.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Did it get made?

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Yeah, it got made. It exists. Okay. Um, over 70 crew members were injured. It is quoted as being one of the most dangerous films everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

By the lions.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Yes, by the lions. It has like no visual effects because all the lions are there and doing things. None of the lions were trained. They knew like very simple tricks, but not really. And so they just kind of recorded them doing what lions do. And they were a little familiar with like they knew the family, but um, again, lions are lions.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

So just three weeks into shooting. So over 70 crew members were injured, but uh some of the big injuries were according to um this is stage32.com blog about surviving the most dangerous film ever made. Three weeks into shooting, a lioness bit the cinematographer, Jack Devon, in the head, effectively scalping him, and he needed 220 stitches. But he stayed the entire five years it took to shoot the project. 11 years to make five years to shoot it alone. Holy shit. The lions also attacked various other crew members. Uh Tippy Hendron suffered uh fractured leg and scalp wounds. Melanie Griffith needed 50 stitches in her face at one point. Like it's just this insane movie. I have never watched it, but yeah, Tippy Hendron, I guess, was traumatized by the birds attacking her, but had no problem with huge lions clawing her and her daughter's face off.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Yeah, how crazy is that story? Full circle. Wild. Wild.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Have you seen Bird Demic?

SPEAKER_00 36:30

No.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

It's barely a movie. It it and I'm sorry to whoever made it. It looks like it was shot. There's three of them. Yeah. I haven't seen the other ones. I've seen the first one. It the birds are an overlay of what looks like emojis. Okay. It's a really bad thing it's the the graphics are terrible. Everything's terrible. It looks like the beginning of a it's shot like the beginning of a 90s porno. It's it's crazy. It's it's not I wouldn't, it's not even so bad that I would recommend watching it. It does have an interesting through line in it, which is that we are causing global warming, which is upsetting the birds. So basically the birds are attacking, the birds are evil, and all of this. They do try to make a point, poorly. They try to make a point that we have done things to the world that has, like you said, upset the nature of things. Yep. So that one's more trying about like global warming a little bit, but it's not like quite it's so funny. I'm seeing like birds outside right now.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

They're watching, they're listening. They're watching everything. Like, huh? They're on to us in that apartment.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

But yeah, it's like a similar idea of we've upset the balance of nature and now nature is fighting back, and they just use birds in that.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

And 28 days later, it's interesting because birds are not, it's not a horror movie about birds, certainly. Yes. But I think birds act a little bit as like storm birds or you know, as like heralds. Yeah, warm. Yeah, and they tend to like move with the infected, and they seem to be immune from the from the disease. But they kind of because you see them as the infected pack moves, you it's like almost like a scout. Like you can tell where they are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Well, similar to that is the movie The Crow. I love great movie. If you're thinking about being goth, watch the crow, they'll push you right over the edge. But in that, it kind of reminds me of Odin a little bit with his like watchers, his spies. The crow is both a metaphor for what Eric Draven has become. Yeah. Which is kind of a carrier almost like a carrier bird where he's preying on the dead, but they're not quite dead yet because he is the one that kills them as well. Right. Yeah, the crow acts as his like eye, his he sends the crow in first, or it's almost like a harpinger of him coming. The bird that I is really good because not only similar to the raven, not only is it the metaphor, it's also a physical thing of the world. Right. So it's a metaphor of this death and dread, but also a physical thing of look out, like he's here. He's here. Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to have a bird that flies in before I enter a room, so you know I'm there.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

And I can see through them a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

There's a raven in the witch, which has this kind of like pecking, you know, anxiety, like you know, back of your neck grating moment. But I want to hear from you about the omen too.

Storm Birds, Brontë, And Dread

SPEAKER_01 39:00

The omen is about uh the antichrist. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

So boring. I'm sorry. So boring. I find it to be one of the slowest horror movies ever made.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

That's fair. And I did just read the book, and it's very similar. It's just a lot of buildup of things. The book is interesting because you at least get to see different characters' perspectives instead of like, but yeah, it's a lot of just build-up. Well, it's basically it's omens. Right. That's what the movies are. The whole, especially the first one, is just a whole like shitload of omens that something is wrong. And I think that's what happens in the omen too with the birds, is that it's just like more omens, like more just basic superstitious humanity things that show the ending of the world. Right. I tried to find some things with like hell and birds and everything like that, and there is some mention of it, but it's just one of those things where they became associated with religion, with gods, and just when they act weird, and same with the omen, where it's just like, what if we take every possible superstition and throw it in there? And I think that's what they did with the omen.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

I also want to talk a little bit about Twin Peaks, which is one of my favorite shows of all time, and I am overdue for a rewatch, but owls specifically play such a fun role in Twin Peaks.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

The owls are not what they seem.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

They are not what they seem, and they are very like they're this very important and mysterious symbol in the series. So I don't want to give too much away, but essentially they play a somewhat similar role in Twin Peaks to the flocks of spybirds and Lord of the Rings. Like, yeah, you get this sense that they're like able to move between worlds. And that, you know, kind of like to the Black Lodge and all this stuff, they're like a symbol of that. But they also they seem to be like spies and scouts for that.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

Yeah. And one thing I love about uh Twin Peaks generally, and especially the owls in Twin Peaks, is that, and yeah, I don't want to give too much about Twin Peaks away because it's just everyone watch it, it's required.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

So good. It's so good.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

But they never truly reveal what the owls are.

SPEAKER_00 40:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

They say the owls are not what they seem, and you get a good hint of what they are. But like to just have this ominous presence that you're like pretty sure you know what it's up to, but you don't, like that same with like every time I see a bird circling like in the air, I'm like, oh, there's a dead thing over there. But I'm like, but what could it be? Where is it? Like, what is why is the human, yeah. Yeah, like and so it's kind of like that where you're like, I know why the owl's there, but the fact that they would just flash to it occasionally, also owls have a very distinct noise that people associate with almost like being in the woods alone at night. And especially because owls are such stealthy predators, yeah. So to hear them and see them is like more rare. Yeah. And so just they're such great symbols in Twin Peaks.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

So good. It's so good. Oh my god, that would be fun. There's a whole podcast on Twin Peaks. Put it on the put it on the list. Yeah. I mean, come on, birds are so special, right? They're like, even when you're looking at other animals, all the things we've talked about, they're incredibly intelligent, they're able to communicate, they can mimic humans, they like that, you know, they have really intense superpowers almost. Like they can fly, all this stuff that makes them feel, I think, really foreign. And again, kind of like this idea of unc be uncanny a little bit with birds. In horror, they serve so many different roles. In some cases, they're associated with ecological horror. They are associated with like filmmakers are playing with these superstitions and mythologies and all this flow folklore that we've talked about, these different like religious, ancient religious beliefs about birds, right? That's something that's so ripe for different filmmakers and writers to play with in their pieces and to weave, and not just because it's fun, but to weave something in that feels really inherently human. Yeah. And like we've been raised, even in 2025, to have like thoughts about like associations with birds and death and things like that. And I feel like there's also this more romantic use of them when you think about Wuthering Heights or even the Raven, where they're personified in a different way. And it's like it's almost like you may disagree, but I feel like it's almost like Poe is giving the Raven like human qualities or like honoring the Raven's intelligence, you know, by the way that he's writing about him. So I think they're just one of those things that are all over the place. They're like in, you know, in everything there there is birds, and it's fun to try to trace it back and understand what birds mean to different cultures and why filmmakers or artists or whoever are adding them as symbols into their works and what that represents.

SPEAKER_01 43:21

Yeah. Also, please appreciate your pigeons. If you're one of those people that likes doves but doesn't like pigeons, that's ridiculous because they're the same bird.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

They're the same bird?

SPEAKER_01 43:30

They're basically they're in the same family, it's just a different type. Like morning doves, doves, and pigeons are all very closely related.

SPEAKER_00 43:37

Ooh, morning doves. That's like morning.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

Do you know anything about that?

SPEAKER_01 43:43

So the morning dove uh is allegedly named after its call because people think its call sounds melancholy or mourning. But yeah, they're same as like doves, they're viewed as like just peaceful joy. Yeah. But pigeons are pushed to the side and they're just a different type of dove, everyone.

SPEAKER_00 43:59

Yeah.

Hitchcock’s Birds And The Real Capitola Event

SPEAKER_01 43:59

And We used to use them in our military and they saved a lot of people's lives. That's right. Justice for pigeons. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

Thank you guys so much for being here. Kate, thank you. Thank you. It is such a treat and so fun to record and research and collaborate with you. So thank you for lending your time and talents to us. And we will talk to you guys soon. Bye.