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 188 - The History of Contagious Curses
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This week, Abby and Alan dive into the folklore behind horror’s most contagious curses, from The Ring to Smile to It Follows.
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.
Sources
- BBC article by Quinn Hargitai: The Strange Power of The Evil Eye
- A psmag.com article on The Aye-Aye and The Finger of Death by Jason Bittel
- Collider article by Gabrielle Grady: The Ring is Based on A Haunting Ghost Story
- The Evil Eye: The Classic Account of an Ancient Superstition by Frederick Thomas Elworthy.
- Yale Tropical Resource Institute Article by Eleanor Sterling, PhD Candidate: The Aye-Aye Lemur of Madagascar: Feeding Ecology, Social Behavior, and Microhabitat
- James George Frazer in The Golden Bough
- An Anthropology Review article by Claudine Casser: Contagious Magic - Items that have been in contact, remain connected
- https://www.bellwitchcave.com/bell-witch-legend/
Welcome And The Curse Premise
SPEAKER_00Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. My name is Abby Brinker. I'm sitting here with Alan Kudan.
SPEAKER_01Hi.
SPEAKER_00And today we are talking about contagious curses.
SPEAKER_01Contagious curses.
SPEAKER_00Curses that can be passed from person to person.
SPEAKER_01Isn't I feel like most curses get passed from person to person.
SPEAKER_00I don't think so. I think a lot of times there's a curse that somebody puts on another person.
SPEAKER_01From person to person.
SPEAKER_00But I don't mean I mean this is something you can catch.
SPEAKER_01From victim to victim.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I understand.
SPEAKER_00So you and I recently watched Smile 2, which was very long overdue.
SPEAKER_01I loved Smile 2. I yes, I loved Smile 2.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it got me thinking about curses. What are the historic legends and folklore that the Smile franchise might be pulling from? And then I got to thinking about how many different horror franchises, and there really are so many. Really? Use the trope of contagious curses.
SPEAKER_01I can only think of Smile, It Follows, and Drag Me to Hell.
SPEAKER_00Well, just wait. We're gonna get into it.
SPEAKER_01Are there more?
SPEAKER_00There's more. First, let's cite our sources. There's a BBC article by Quinn Hargatai, The Strange Power of the Evil Eye, a PSMag.com article on the I and the Finger of Death by Jason Biddle, a collider article by Gabrielle Grady, The Ring is based on a haunting ghost story, a book called The Evil Eye, The Classic Account of an Ancient Superstition by Frederick Thomas Elworthy, a Yale Tropical Resource Institute article by Eleanor Sterling, PhD candidate, The Aye Lemur of Madagascar, Feeding Ecology, Social Behavior, and the Microhabitat, and all of the other sources will be in the description of this podcast.
SPEAKER_01I cannot wait to hear about the contagious lemur
Defining A Contagious Curse
SPEAKER_01curse.
SPEAKER_00So what is a contagious curse?
SPEAKER_01I'm glad you asked.
SPEAKER_00It's a curse that spreads from person to person, or as Alan caveated earlier, victim to victim.
SPEAKER_01Victim, victim.
SPEAKER_00It can be passed via witnessing something you shouldn't see, or the knowledge of something secret, or proximity to trauma and death. There's so many different iterations of this in different horror films, but those seem to be kind of the main buckets. Or sex. Yes, or sex.
SPEAKER_01Sexually transmitted curses.
SPEAKER_00That's true.
SPEAKER_01STCs.
SPEAKER_00For me as a viewer, this motif tends to be more unnerving than other types of horror movies, like a traditional slasher film, for example, because the threat, this threat's not seen. It's not like Mike Myers is walking down a street following you with a knife. This is something that in a lot of these cases the victim doesn't understand for a majority of the movie, but also they might not even know they have it for a while. The other thing that's really interesting is that contagious curses generally cannot be escaped through distance. So you can't run away from it. You just have to figure it out and then do the thing you need to do to pass it on.
SPEAKER_01Is there any curse that can be escaped through distance?
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm thinking about like a threat in a horror movie, and a lot of those you can escape by distance.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, but that I think like that's just a like hauntings are generally localized.
SPEAKER_00And some curses I think flirt with flirt with a line of being a haunting.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00Like my movie, for instance, which I can kind of talk about because it's coming out in a month or two on streaming.
SPEAKER_01Okay, go on.
SPEAKER_00In that movie, coming to the location is important to trigger the curse. That's an that's a key element. If this person never went to where they go in the movie, the curse would not be a problem for them.
SPEAKER_01That sounds really interesting. What what what's the name of the movie?
SPEAKER_00The movie's called Voices Carrie.
SPEAKER_01And I I would love to see it. Where can I watch it?
SPEAKER_00Don't worry. You will all know the second that you can watch it. I will make it very clear.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Okay. But but hang on. Okay.
SPEAKER_01With curses, I feel like they are intrinsically tied to the cursed person or thing. There's no like escaping a curse without doing some kind of ritual.
SPEAKER_00You're sure, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm I'm just trying to differentiate contagious curses.
SPEAKER_00Well, a cr I think a curse that's not a contagious curse generally. Such as is either cast upon you, right, by somebody who is angry with you. It can be passed through bloodlines. It could be passed, again, through proximity to like a certain space, but it's or it can be specifically cast like I curse you, I curse your family, I curse your dog or whatever. But generally, you can't catch it accidentally, right? It's like intentionally me being like, screw you, I'm cursing you. Whereas with this, you could like catch it like a cold.
SPEAKER_01I understand. Okay, please continue.
Horror Movie Transmission Rules
SPEAKER_00All right, so let's talk about some examples in horror because I think that will help define what a contagious curse is. And again, there's some really good horror movies that play with this idea. So first, and I would argue most iconic is the ring.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So in the ring, watching a cursed videotape means you will die in seven days, right? Unless you do a thing. And so Spoilers. Watching the videotape, like you could accidentally watch that videotape and you're cursed. That's a contagious curse.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's actually this is a this is an interesting point. Is it the videotape? Like who first off, who made this videotape? Is that ever addressed?
SPEAKER_00The tape was of course created by Samara.
SPEAKER_01She made it herself?
SPEAKER_00She did.
SPEAKER_01She climbed out of the well, set her psychic ability, set up a tripod, filmed multiple takes, and no, she got it on the first take. Well, no, because there's like angles and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she did she did it intentionally that way.
SPEAKER_01But then what is there only one copy of the tape?
SPEAKER_00I think so. But the point is, and of course this goes for Ring Gu as well, but the point is that's a curse you can get that's not intended for you, Alan, right? It's not like I'm saying I curse you. You can happen upon this VHS in a goodwill and you're cursed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but the I'm sorry, it's just there's so many plot holes with this movie. Like what VHS tape doesn't inherently end up on a shelf unwatched in someone's basement in a box.
SPEAKER_00I think that's part of the term of the curse. Can strike when you're least expecting it.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00Like how like you would be of all people most susceptible to a curse like this because you are constantly buying and giving out old forms of media.
SPEAKER_01Sure, but I'm not watching them myself because I don't have a VHS player.
SPEAKER_00But if you did, you would certainly pop it in. Maybe. Yeah. The curse in smile passes to anyone who witnesses a victim's traumatic smiling suicide, after which a malevolent entity attaches itself and psychologically breaks them through escalating hallucinations. Within days, the victim is driven to kill themselves in front of someone else continuing the chain, unless they transfer it first by committing a violent act that traumatizes a new witness.
SPEAKER_01Great franchise.
SPEAKER_00In truth or dare, the curse is based around the idea of a supernatural game that follows you and punishes you if you refuse to keep playing.
SPEAKER_01Huh. Have we seen have I seen this? Probably not. What year is this from? I'm gonna guess 2006.
SPEAKER_002018. Okay, great.
SPEAKER_01Uh that sounds like a fun movie.
SPEAKER_00The also a lot of weird smiling in that one. The curse and it follows is passed through sex, after which a relentless entity takes human form, usually of somebody that the victim knows, and slowly walks towards the victim, visible only to those infected. If it catches and kills them, it moves backwards down the chain to the previous person. So really the only temporary escape is passing it to somebody else and hoping that many people keep passing it so that you're far enough removed down the chain that it won't come back to you. That one is so scary.
SPEAKER_01How does it kill? I don't remember.
SPEAKER_00It just physically assaults them. Like this entity that's taking the shape of a person, like physically assaults the people.
SPEAKER_01So it just looks like someone is getting beaten up by the invisible man?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, to somebody else, yeah. The curse in the grudge is created when somebody dies in extreme rage or sorrow, forming a spirit that haunts a specific location and attaches to anyone who enters that location. Those affected are relentlessly pursued by the vengeful entities and inevitably typically killed, with the curse spreading to the new locations and victims through contact. In Fallen, a demon jumps from person to person through touch. In Sinister, watching video footage invites something into your home and into your family line. And I'm actually just um Fallen made me think about what's the Friday the 13th movie where Jason like body hops?
SPEAKER_01Oh it's kind of like that. That would be uh, I don't remember the number, but it was Jason Goes to Hell.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. That one was fun.
SPEAKER_01That was fun.
SPEAKER_00That was a fun series.
SPEAKER_01It was unique. I am glad we watched it as part of the Friday the 13th marathon because it doesn't really feel like a Friday 13th movie, but it is a fun movie.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The curse in the autopsy of Jane Doe, which I'm excited to see after reading this, centers on an unidentified woman whose body carries a supernatural force that manipulates reality and inflicts escalating ritualistic torment on those examining that's amazing. Yeah. As the autopsy progresses, the entity punishes the living for perceived sins, trapping them in a closed loop of hallucination and violence with no clear escape.
SPEAKER_01Hot dang.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's next on the list. In Drag Me to Hell, a curse attaches itself to a victim and escalates over time with no easy escape. In Thinner, a curse spreads through physical change, eating away at the victim day by day. In the happening, there is an invisible environmental transmission causing mass suicide. And I wonder if you're going to challenge me on this one, but in Candyman, if someone says his name, the legend activates and the curse spreads through storytelling.
SPEAKER_01I'll give it to you for Candyman. I will not give it to you for the happening. Because that is spores.
SPEAKER_00I know.
SPEAKER_01It's not a curse.
SPEAKER_00It's in vi but it's it's something more than spores. It's the plants saying enough. That's right, it's pollen. The plants cursing the humans.
SPEAKER_01That's like saying when it's not just pollen.
SPEAKER_00It's not something they have in them all the time.
SPEAKER_01That's like saying when one person decides to go on a murder spree, he's cursing all of them as he goes.
SPEAKER_00But it's not like the plants have the ability to kill us. There's something supernatural happening in the happening.
SPEAKER_01They formed a hive mind. They are evolving.
SPEAKER_00All right. We'll take the happening out. In the bye-bye man, the curse travels through thought and speech. So if you think or say the name. So clearly, right, regardless of whether where you um land on the happening, this is a significant trope in horror. So let's talk about some of the different inspirations for contagious curses.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Which can be found in many different folktales and cultures. I also just think there's a point in horror where I believe contagious curse films started to influence other films. So like I don't know that all of these are calling back to this folklore necessarily. I think they're kind of starting to inspire each other, especially after the ring came out.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00That's just my um, you know, uneducated two cents. Like, I don't know that the filmmakers of It Folllows were like researching some of the you know native folklores that we're gonna talk about today, but I do think they were like, oh man, that trope in the ring was cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, that's also kind of just the beauty of horror. You can just make the shit up as you go, and then it often dates back to some mythology because someone before you made up that shit earlier.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Okay. So let's start with perception-based curses.
The Evil Eye And Nazar
SPEAKER_00I want to start with an example of a contagious curse in folklore that is foundational to this idea, the evil eye. To better understand where the evil eye comes from, it helps to separate two things that people often confuse, myself included. What many call the evil eye is actually a protective charm called the Nazar, which was designed to defend against the curse. So you know all the jewelry with the evil eye on it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's called the Hamsa.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, the hand that's the hand version, right?
SPEAKER_01It's uh yeah, it's the hand with the eye on it.
SPEAKER_00But this is just the eye. I'll show you. So the threat of the evil eye is this threat that a harmful curse is believed to pass from one person to another through a look or I guess through a look, but it's typically driven by envy. So it's kind of like this whole thing is kind of like uh allegory. It like feels to me like a biblical um or like very religious allegory. And I'm saying biblical because I'm thinking about the Ten Commandments when it says, Don't covet thy neighbor's wife, like that's what this boils down to. It's like if you look at somebody with jealousy, you like this curse can be created. So it's unintentional. So it just takes a glance of admiration or thinking too much about somebody else's beauty, success, or good fortune, and that can be enough to trigger the curse. While versions of the evil eye have appeared across cultures for thousands of years, the belief in the curse stretches back even farther and is much harder to pinpoint. At its core, the idea of the evil eye is very simple. When someone has too much visible and openly observed success, they risk drawing the resentment of others. That jealousy is believed to take on a life of its own, an insidious curse. So in folklore, the curse itself most often strikes these very vulnerable or valuable parts of somebody's life. So infants, brides, livestock, or anything tied to prosperity. This notion appears in Athiopica by Heliodorus of Amisha, published around the third or fourth century AD, where he writes, quote, when anyone looks at what is excellent with an envious eye, he fills the surrounding atmosphere with a pernicious quality and transmits his own envenomed exhalations into whatever is nearest to him. End quote. The evil eye is often treated less like a spell and more like a contamination. Its effects are typically sudden and unexplained. Illness, misfortune, infertility, or the loss of something once thriving. Clearly, the evil eye curse can be easily linked to a morality lesson in being humble, right? So it's also encouraging you to, I think, on one hand, appreciate what you have, and on the other hand, to not be too braggy about your good fortune. Because someone might curse you. This belief is not confined to a single place or time. Like so many of the folktales that we talk about on this podcast, it stretches across continents and centuries. One of the most comprehensive studies of the phenomenon appears in The Evil Eye, a classic account of an ancient superstition by Frederick Thomas Elworthy. In it, Elworthy traces the motif through a wide range of cultural expressions, from the deadly gaze of the Gorgons in Greek myths to Irish tales of individuals capable of cursing livestock with a glance. People who you pissed off.
SPEAKER_01So you look with a glance.
SPEAKER_00So I'll come over and I'll curse your cows.
SPEAKER_01You're walking over, you take a look at the cow. Do you have to make eye contact with the cows?
SPEAKER_00I I do.
SPEAKER_01You personally? Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when I do it.
SPEAKER_01So they have to look back at you. How do you get a cow's attention?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's very easy. You just walk until you're in their range. You know, you're close enough, they can't avoid you.
SPEAKER_01You enter their battle zone.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Because of this ever-present threat, cultures developed ways to deflect or neutralize it. Protective charms, like the Nazar, but also small rituals that can involve spoken prayers or even the act of spitting to break the curse. I think we've all seen that in movies and cultures, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes. That's interesting. I I never associated spitting with protecting one from a curse, but that makes perfect sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. There's always like those movies where like there's an old woman in a village and she's spitting, and it's like they're always spitting. Always spitting. The symbol of the eye has become so deeply embedded in human storytelling that it even surfaces in major religious texts, including the Bible and the Quran. Despite the association with older pre-Christian belief system what you me you're leaving out the Torah, huh? Despite its associations with older pre-Christian belief systems. Not in the Torah.
SPEAKER_01It's not in the Torah.
SPEAKER_00It's not according to my notes.
SPEAKER_01It's probably in the Talmud.
SPEAKER_00And at its heart, the idea persists for a reason. It reflects a universal anxiety and the very human response of jealousy and comparing ourselves to others. I think the evil eye is really interesting because even if you don't believe in the curse itself in a supernatural sense, there is still a truth to the fact that being jealous of others and constantly comparing yourself, etc., can embed itself in your brain and act like a curse does over time.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00So it's kind of like you can't deny it. Everyone's got to get a Nazar.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00Just to remind you to stay humble, no bragging, no coveting.
SPEAKER_01None.
SPEAKER_00Just stay neutral.
SPEAKER_01Don't don't even do anything.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Just vibe. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What's really interesting also is like the evil eye and the Nazar are still really present in at least the the symbol of the, you know, the the bead and the talisman that can break the curse are super prevalent in fashion still today, right? It's fascinating. Okay, I want to talk about a different
The Aye-Aye Lemur Death Omen
SPEAKER_00curse.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Which one now?
SPEAKER_00In Madagascar, there's a creature called the I. The I is known to have an extra long finger on either hand and is believed to be able to curse you if it points that finger at you.
SPEAKER_01I thought you said this is a lemur.
SPEAKER_00Now, in reality, the aye is a type of lemur.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00What the aye is believed to do depends entirely on where you are. Even from village to the next village, the lore is different. Some see it as a direct omen of death. In other regions, it is said to point its long finger at a person or a home, marking them for misfortune. I mark you for misfortune. Illness, sudden death, or a string of bad luck may follow. But in reality, again, because eye eyes are nocturnal and rarely seen, there is a lot of fear-based folklore around them. When a person does encounter an eye-eye, they often just see a pair of reflective eyes in the dark or a strange silhouette or shadow of their thin finger. In some cases, this fear of the unknown or misunderstood has driven people to kill eye eyes on site.
SPEAKER_01How long of a finger are we talking about here?
SPEAKER_00Oh boy. I mean, it's like a couple of inches. It's a small animal.
SPEAKER_01Oh, this is a crazy looking animal. Look at its hand. No, don't that's I'd be freaked out too if it started pointing to me. It's got those little grabby bat hands.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's it's so weird.
SPEAKER_00The aye spends its nights moving through trees. It uses its long finger to lightly tap on wooden surfaces. They have large sensitive ears that listen for the vibrations and allow for it to hear what's in the wood. Scientists refer to this method as percussive foraging, something similar to how certain bats or whales locate its prey.
SPEAKER_01Are they looking for bugs or something?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're looking for grub.
SPEAKER_01Quite literally.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, quite literally. Once it identifies its food, the eye gets to work. They use their powerful incisors, often compared to those of a beaver, and they gnaw into the wood and they find their meal. Those teeth are remarkably strong. In captivity, this is just a fun fact. I eyes have been known to chew through concrete when under stimulated.
SPEAKER_02Oh.
SPEAKER_00But that's not the weirdest part.
SPEAKER_02Oh.
SPEAKER_00The I.I. deploys its highly specialized middle finger because it has a ball and socket joint similar to the human shoulder, which allows it to freely rotate in all directions searching for the little grubs. I don't like that. So this finger, right, of the I. Which is definitely why it inspired strange tales in folklore as humans tried to understand it.
SPEAKER_01Gotta say, Madagascar and Australia, these two places really just made some weird, weird animals.
SPEAKER_00Totally. So the reason why I bring this up, a few reasons. So think of the I as the videotape in the ring, right?
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00The I is the thing where in nature it can appear to people who live in regions where you know there's I's in the woods and stuff.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00And they believe that if it points its finger at you, like you're gonna die. Or there's gonna be some really devastating impact, right?
SPEAKER_01In seven days.
SPEAKER_00Whether it's bad luck or illness or whatever it is, but like in some some cases they believe you would die.
SPEAKER_01So how do you break the curse?
SPEAKER_00There's no well, I just wanted to say there's no like physical contact here, and it's not, I don't think like, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but like super intentional. It's kind of like if you stumble upon this thing, you could be cursed.
SPEAKER_01Is it like vampire rules where if you kill the head I'm you're all safe?
SPEAKER_00Don't get too far ahead, Alan. But despite their eerie reputation, I eyes are in trouble. The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies them as endangered. And while exact numbers are unknown, their population is believed to be declining. There was even a period in the 1930s and 1940s when scientists thought that they had vanished entirely because it was so rare to see one of them. So part of what makes them so difficult to track is the way they live. Eye eyes can roam across very large territories, sometimes up to 7,000 acres, and they occupy a wide range of habitats across Madagascar.
SPEAKER_01Aren't these things like the size of your hand?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're little babies. So they're the most broadly distributed lemur in the world.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00But at the same time, they exist in very low densities. To really understand the fear surrounding them, though, you have to Look beyond the animal and into like the culture of the region. So in Madagascar, there's a concept known as fatty, F A D Y, often translated as taboo. These taboos govern behavior in deeply specific ways, and they vary widely depending on region, community, or even families. Among the marina, for instance, holding a funeral on a Tuesday is considered forbidden, with the belief that doing so could bring about another death. Another fatty prohibits passing an egg directly from one person to another, or even singing while eating. So these rules again can shift really dramatically over very short distances, even from village to village. Some people might avoid eating chicken entirely, while another nearby village might eat chicken, but they might refuse to eat pork. But I think with this kind of cultural context of these taboos in this region, we can better understand why the ayye became more became this cursed creature, this cursed figure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean you would hate this thing too if you just walk out, there's a lemur in a tree, points at you, and yells, Fatty.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that would be pretty mean. I want to move from a specific curse to a broader idea that I think will help kind of round out our understanding of how these beliefs function.
Contagious Magic And The Law
SPEAKER_00Let's talk about contagious magic.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So this is gonna start abstract, Alan, and then I'm gonna give you some examples, but just stick with me through the more abstract part of this.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Contagious magic is the belief that once two things have come into contact, they remain connected even after they are separated.
SPEAKER_01Like quantum linking.
SPEAKER_00An invisible or spiritual bond. I don't know what quantum linking is.
SPEAKER_01Also known as quantum entanglement.
SPEAKER_00Can you give me an example?
SPEAKER_01Uh so you if you make one once two particles uh are joined by a quantum entanglement, uh when one moves, the other moves as if it was still in proximity to the other. In distance does not matter.
SPEAKER_00Great. Exactly what you just said, right? Contagious magic claims that the connection doesn't fade between these two things with space or time, with distance or time. Some of these practices and beliefs date back to prehistory before written record. But the idea was formalized by a man named James George Frasier in the Golden Bough, where he outlined what he called the quote law of contagion. According to this principle, a person can be affected through anything that was once part of them or touched them. So this could be their hair, blood, saliva, or even clothing, right? So it could be something that was physically part of their body, or it could be like a clothing or an item that was deeply meaningful to them.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00Quoting from Fraser's Law of Contagion, quote, the most powerful example of contagious magic is the magical symphony, which is supposed to exist between a man and any severed portion of his person as his hair or nails, so that whoever gets possession of human hair or nails may work his will at any distance upon the person from which they were cut. End of quote. Yeah, exactly. Very close to that. In practice, this means the body is never entirely self-contained. It leaves pieces of itself in the world, and those pieces remain vulnerable. Across different traditions, objects like nail clippings or strands of hair are treated with caution, hidden, burned, or buried to prevent them from being used in magic. Like the evil eye, contagious magic doesn't always require direct confrontation. There is no need to approach the person. The connection has already been established. From there, whatever is done to the object is believed to echo back to its source. Damage the object and you damage the person, and protect the object and you could protect the person. So this practice appears in countless cultural rituals. In European folk traditions, for example, so-called witch bottles were filled with personal materials and buried or hidden as a way to trap or repel harmful magic, as seen in the Love Witch. In other cases, healers might use an item belonging to a sick person as a conduit for treatment, drawing illness out through the object rather than the body itself.
SPEAKER_01So as soon as you said fingernails, I was reminded of Nagalfar, the the the ship of the dead in Norse mythology.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Where I thought it was made from fingernail clippings. Mm-hmm. So but I I quickly looked it up and I actually I had it reversed. This is the opposite of what you're saying. Where it's the the fingernails of the dead are used to construct the ship. In Norse superstition, they would trim the fingernails of the deceased as short as humanly possible so that the sh it would slow the construction of the ship. Okay. Uh, which when it was completed was one of the signals of Ragnarok.
SPEAKER_00Got it. Well, that's cool. So I talk about contagious magic. It's not entirely one for one with a lot of the examples, but I do think some of these like folk traditions and like kind of pagan beliefs, you know, ritual, ritualistic sort of beliefs, have influenced vaguely. And like this idea of this kind of spiritual connection between a person and parts of that person or a person and belongings feels, you know, like a building block, maybe, for some of these movies.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00I also want to talk about chain reaction curses.
Vampirism As Chain Reaction Curse
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00The vampire is one of the clearest examples of a curse that can be passed on. And we really can't talk about contagious curses without talking about vampirism. In many traditions, becoming a vampire is the result of an existing vampire biting a human, which begs the question: how was the first vampire created? But I do want to say, like vampi the creating vampires is obviously very different from the ring or it follows, where something is accidentally passed on, or may even if it's intentionally passed on, it's kind of this invisible thing, whereas like a vampire biting you feels intentional, it feels different. But again, I feel like it's a building block for some of these other ideas.
SPEAKER_01That's fair.
SPEAKER_00We know that the vampire mythology largely stems from the misunderstanding of tuberculosis. Of course, listen to our episode on the history of the New England Vampire Panic for more on that.
SPEAKER_01Or just the one about vampires.
SPEAKER_00No, that one's very old. Yeah, that's great. Don't go back that way.
SPEAKER_01Quality content.
SPEAKER_00So it makes sense that vampires kind of came from this misunderstanding of a disease because passing on vampirism from one person to another feels like passing on tuberculosis from one person to another. And that's because that's what inspired it. Folklore across Eastern Europe often treated this as a kind of post-mortem contamination. The mechanics of transmission vary, but the underlying idea remains consistent. The curse is spread through contact, right? There's of course like a billion different iterations of this, but because of this, traditional responses focus on containment. Bodies are staked, burned, or otherwise destroyed, an effort to break the chain. The goal is to halt the spread before it multiplies. So within the framework of contagious magic, the vampire represents a worst-case scenario, right? It's a curse that reproduces. Each interaction risks creating another point of origin and another source of transmission. Because if you're a vampire, then you can turn a hundred other people into a vampire. Yes. There really never seems to be any sort of consequence for that.
SPEAKER_01What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00Like you don't get punished for turning a lot of people into vampires.
SPEAKER_01Uh depends on the vampire mythos.
SPEAKER_00Give me an example.
SPEAKER_01Someone makes a bunch of like new vampires to act as like fodder. Because new vampires are really strong. Not Twilight, I don't think.
SPEAKER_00Well, new vampires are really strong in Twilight.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. It wasn't Twilight. They just make a bunch of shitty vampires. Does that happen in Twilight?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they make like an army of baby vampires.
SPEAKER_01And but it's like highly taboo.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, the highly taboo thing in Twilight is the kid, but the kid.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, there's somebody something else. Coddler vampire.
SPEAKER_01Uh it is I'd say the consequences don't they come from other vampires. Because now we're dealing with immortality. And it's a very taboo thing to make lots of immortals.
SPEAKER_00I think like they want to keep it exclusive.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. They want to keep it exclusive.
SPEAKER_00Because they want to be the alphas.
SPEAKER_01Uh think about what we do in the shadows. Or true blood. I haven't seen true blood. So good. Uh but you know, they're very selective on who they bring into the vampire club because that person has to stick around forever.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Guillermo. I'm seeing Guillermo in a Broadway show in a few weeks. So excited. He's in Rocky Horror Picture Show on Broadway.
SPEAKER_01Does he sing?
SPEAKER_00Maybe yeah. I think he does.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00I'll let you I'll
The Bell Witch Spreads By Attention
SPEAKER_00report back. I want to talk about the case of the Bell Witch, which offers a different, more ambiguous form of contagious curses. One that doesn't rely on physical transformation, but still spreads through contact. So this is centered around the Bell Witch haunting in the early 19th century in Tennessee. The phenomenon began within the Bell family home, but quickly spread farther. The Bell Witch certainly deserves its own episode at some point. It's an iconic paranormal case in the United States, so that could be on the slate.
SPEAKER_01Okay, what is it?
SPEAKER_00But this is a very high-level overview of what happened. So John Bell decides to move his family to Tennessee in the very early 1800s. He purchased 320 acres of farmland. Everything goes pretty good for 13 years. But in 1817, the family starts to see strange farm animals and hear odd noises around the farm.
SPEAKER_01What is a strange farm animal?
SPEAKER_00So often a black dog with glowing eyes, and they are they were thinking of it sort of like a harbinger of doom.
SPEAKER_01Like the the thing from Harry Potter.
SPEAKER_00A dog with two heads, a giant bird, monstrous fowl, and other sort of shifting or like creatures that they can't define, like things they've never seen before. Pretty rock and roll, right?
SPEAKER_01What was the thing from Harry Potter?
SPEAKER_00The Cerberus?
SPEAKER_01No. I mean, yes, but what what was the thing that it was a black dog?
SPEAKER_00Oh, the the grim. The grim. Yeah, the grim. So the sounds that they start to hear on the farm grow more and more intense, and they finally turn into voices. And these voices then escalate and they're speaking directly to the family, and they could be heard in every room of the cabin. So it escalates even farther, and the entity seemed to be physically harming Betsy, one of the children, and it was harming her so badly that at least once it left her unconscious. And as people started to hear about this phenomenon and this paranormal activity, they came to the farm to witness it themselves. So hundreds of people ended up camping out at the farm hoping to have a paranormal experience. The Bell Witch, also known as Kate, vowed to kill John Bell. Just Kate. Kate.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And eventually took credit when he did die. So sadly, on December 20th, 1820, John Bell was found dead in bed with an empty vial of some kind of strange liquid next to his body. Tennessee is the only state to have officially dubbed a death to be caused by the supernatural.
SPEAKER_01Whoa.
SPEAKER_00Because they have officially said that John Bell died of supernatural causes.
SPEAKER_01Did they try, did they put out like a have you seen this person and showed a picture of Kate?
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01They put an arrest warrant for Kate?
SPEAKER_00No. I think they they realize when they've been beat, you know? So visitors who had come to witness the events sometimes reported experiencing the activity themselves. So this is sort of a case where people came to this location and then reported sort of being infected by this curse. The phenomenon seemed to follow where it was getting attention, almost as if kind of the like the attention gave it strength, right? Kind of like um Yil Gaiman's American gods, but in reverse.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00In that way, the bell witch behaves less like an infection of the body and more like uh like an infection of your perception, right? It's like following people that are giving it energy. It's like it's like a soul, what's it called? An energy vampire.
SPEAKER_01Excellent callback to what we do in the shadows.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. There's also suggestions within the lore that the haunting was targeted, focusing particular hostility on specific individuals, especially John Bell. In this case, the curse operates over time and it war really wore him down in the same way I think it does in in Smile. It kind of drove him to kill himself, essentially.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00What makes the Bellwitch especially interesting in the context of contagious magic is kind of this lack of stable form. There's no body, it's something invisible that I think the people at the time are painting to be something paranormal because that's what they know. But it's almost operating like a contagious curse would be in a horror movie, right? It's kind of like they didn't have the language to call it something else. So they call it Kate and they give it a name and it feels like it's spiritualism, but it's not.
SPEAKER_01I hope it was a town meeting and they holla to vote on the name.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I'm really interested in the Belich, and there's so much like that's come out of it in terms of horror that I think it deserves its own episode.
SPEAKER_01Please, I'm interested.
SPEAKER_00Great. Okay. Good to good to know. Sometimes you don't like those kind of um like paranormal, specific paranormal.
SPEAKER_01You're just so skeptical. That's because normally they're lame.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. By the time contagious curses make their way into modern horror, they aren't new ideas.
Why Modern Curses Feel Real
SPEAKER_00They're the reimagining of ancient curses in folklore, or at least using those as building blocks. In Ring Gu in Later the Ring, the curse takes on a form that feels, again, really modern. It uses a videotape, but the mechanics behind it are quite historic and ancient. Like older folklore surrounding the evil eye or contagious magic, the curse spreads through exposure. You don't have to understand it, you don't have to believe it. All you have to do is watch the videotape, and from there, the burden is yours. Pass it on or suffer the consequences. With it follows, the medium changes again. The curse is passed from person to person through intimacy. What's striking is how little the film really explains about the curse. There's no origin story, there's no clear rules beyond transmission, which I think is a really fascinating technique that the filmmakers use because I think it also makes the audience feel like to me, it follows is one of the most unnerving films I've seen in a long time. And I think something about it, like because we don't know the origin story and we're kind of figuring it out as the character is figuring it out, it feels like it feels more real or like more, you know, I can't put it in a box because I'm sort of experiencing this as she's figuring it out. Yeah, sure. And of course, then there's smile, which pushes the idea even further inward. Here the curse spreads through trauma, passed along in moments of these really kind of very intense moments of um emotional outburst, right? Simply witnessing this thing is enough. And there's also something with smile to talk about where we have this guilt in certain characters, right? Who are trying, especially the opening of Smile 2, where the guy who's infected is trying to pass it on to somebody that sucks because he knows there's kind of like this survival guilt of you need to ruin somebody's life to pass it on.
SPEAKER_01Yes, indeed.
SPEAKER_00But what connects all of these franchises is how they update a very old logic for a modern audience. The form of transmission isn't necessarily something new, but all these filmmakers have sort of evolved it into, you know, again. And I again, I'm not saying they're basing any of this off of these things. I'm just saying it's been in the world. So I think what's most scary to me about Contagious Curses is that especially these movies, generally, sometimes the entity takes some kind of form, and in the ring you have Samar and all that, but like a lot of the time it's literally like invisible. And you have to figure out the rules of this thing with the, you know, the person in the film. And there's this period of, so say in real life, you got a contagious curse. You don't know what's happening to you. Something horrifying is happening to you. You probably think you're going through psychosis. It's not like, again, there's a Michael Myers, you know, coming at you with a kitchen knife. You don't like the first thing you're gonna do is doubt your own sanity. And that's something that I think makes these particularly horrifying. And then the other layer is that often to get rid of them, you have to kill somebody else or put this on somebody else. And so even if you do survive it, it's like the burden of living with that guilt for the rest of your life to me feels very heavy.
SPEAKER_01Well, I I think it's different mythos to methos. Like what you're talking about is very similar to smile, you know?
SPEAKER_00But yes, but also it follows and also the ring. Sure.
SPEAKER_01These are more intangible aggressors.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that culminate with a very tangible aggression.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01Whereas there are other contagious curses, such as vampirism or like lycanthropy, or even even the, you know, we call it a virus, but the zombie virus, right?
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01You're it's it makes the undead. And these types of things are a much more gradual change that's incredibly hard to dispute. You know, if you are turning into a vampire, it's gonna be really hard to be like, am I making this up as you burst into flames in the sun and have long fangs?
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Uh, but when you have uh this invisible entity, if you have this entity that is invisible to everyone else following you or appearing to just you and making horrible things happen, that could very easily be explained by mental illness.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_01And so it's not until you die a horrific death that you have concrete proof.
Scariest Premises And Closing Thoughts
SPEAKER_00Okay, of all of the contagious curse movies that you can think of, what is the scariest kind of premise to you?
SPEAKER_01It follows as a pretty bad one because you're it's just borrowed time. There is no fix. And, you know, there there's no fix in most mythos of vampirism, but at least you get to be a vampire with all the cool superpowers. Here, you're just a victim the whole time with this scary thing that's gonna kill you.
SPEAKER_00It's also, I think, particularly scary to have the mechanic where they have just that person like walking straight at you. Yep. Like it's it's very unnerving to me. It follows really horrified me if that's not coming through.
SPEAKER_01Or, you know, in the ring, like after you watch the tape, you're fucked. I I never saw this the sequel. I don't know if it's even canon, but you know, is is there any way to break the curse? I think you're just after you see that tape in seven days, you die, and that is that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it would be not to be too meta again, but I think it would be fun to do a deep dive at some point on the ring and ring goo, you know, like comparing those because they like the ring was so popular when it came out.
SPEAKER_01And I it came out when we were very at a very formative age for us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but I think like for a generation of people, it was very like exactly, like it did a lot for our love as a generation for horror. And it like really, really was like a zeitgeisty moment. Like it became viral in a way. You know, people like everybody was talking about it in school, and like you had to see it. Yep, you'd watch it with your friends, you'd want to rent it. And then, you know, I watched it back like I don't know, maybe like 15 years ago. But it was so, so, so scary as a kid, right? It like fucked me up. And then watching it as an adult, I was like, oh, this hasn't aged. Like, this isn't scary at all anymore. But it would be fun to watch them together and see.
SPEAKER_01Well, it was the The Ring is definitely a cursed movie.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh, because it was that very movie that I allegedly downloaded illegally off the internet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And of all the movies that I allegedly downloaded, that's the one that they came after me for.
SPEAKER_00That is cursed. Maybe we shouldn't do a deep dive on it. What if we did a deep dive on it and our episode on the ring was like a contagious curse to people?
SPEAKER_01Then we become famous.
SPEAKER_00And our whole audience dies.
SPEAKER_01Then the audience grows. Like any virus that is still around today, it spreads faster than it kills.
SPEAKER_00Okay. That's a good point. That's good to know. Put that into the marketing ideas bucket.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you all so much for being here. This was a fun one. I, you know, like again, Smile 2, I think, really stuck with us. I I liked it. I liked like the premise of the rock star piece. I don't know. It just felt like a fun. It was different. It was fun. I thought there was gonna be more like mass spreading, which I guess they're they're uh I d I'm gonna stop you right there. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Uh because, you know, I everyone who hasn't seen this movie, it's worth it. It's a very it's a very good sequel. Not gonna say it's an amazing movie, but it's a great sequel.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_01Uh because it takes an idea that was definitely a one-trick pony and it expands it in an interesting way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's fair.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, it's totally worth checking out. Uh, I you know, I got surprised at the beginning of this episode because I almost never know what the topic is. Yeah. But this is one of the situations where I wish I had, because there's all these cool movies that now I gotta go back and watch, as opposed to watching them ahead of time and being able to tell you cool facts about um the autopsy of Jane. That's right.
SPEAKER_00Well, don't worry, On. You watch those and you report back to us. We'll be waiting for your fun facts anytime. Thank you guys so much for being here. Stay safe, stay spooky. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.
