Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we pity the poor Babysitter. Monday we found out why these darlings are hunted. Wednesday we look at how the legend survived the digital age.

Babysitter. Killer. Telephone. We’ve taken a neatly assembled story and plucked off the buttons, ripped the stitching and unloaded fistfuls of stuffing. Might as well see it the rest of the way through. Parents. Children. Let’s add them to this strewn mess of analog technology, gender stereotyping, Aquarian culture wars and artificial maternity.

I had briefly mentioned that, in many versions of the Babysitter and the Stranger Upstairs, at least one of the sitter’s employers is a doctor. In almost every version, the parents, doctorate holding or not, are wealthy. On the surface, this seems a mere plot device – the teenaged kid-herding neophyte is lured into the job by the promise of healthy dividends while, at the same time, the couple’s sizeable home fulfills certain narrative logistics. In other words, it would be difficult for the killer to call the babysitter from inside a single-phone apartment, or sneak unnoticed through a ranch-style house. And that makes enough sense. But let’s say we take a moment to get cynical:
Even if we accept many folklorists’ assertions that, when deconstructed, this urban legend takes on gender oppression and warns girls away from fast-tracking themselves toward some sort of patriarchically enforced homemakership and oppressive motherhood – that it’s a GRRL power ballad played in the key of independent womanhood – we need to consider the story’s intended demographic. After all, “gala-bound rich couple seeking responsible teen for one-night babysitting job $$$” rarely bypass the nearby middle-class McMansions and make a beeline for the barrio. Likewise, many blue collar families comprise two working parents who are beholden to shift work, and older children who are busy enough looking after each other, or working themselves. (Obviously, these are gross generalizations, but remember, we’re applying them to a story in which the main characters are Rich Couple, Attractive Teenage Girl, Sleeping Children, and Anonymous, Motivationless Killer.)

Get the rest AFTER THE JUMP…
(more…)

I don’t know what to say about “Splice.” On the one hand, it does exactly what a thoughtful sci-fi story should: uses genre trappings to raise socio-culturally relevant, real-world questions without being so presumptuous as to provide pat, definitive answers. The story of a self-assured couple who literally have the equipment to create life, but lack the foresight and self-knowledge to responsibly care for it is essentially presented as the larger, catch-all story of modern parenting. The movie then painstakingly breaks down a variety of parental concerns – from education to discipline to gender imprinting to sexuality – all within a fast-paced and suitably creepy 103 minute runtime.

On the other hand, and I don’t really know how else to put this… the movie is kinda goofy. And I should love that, right? There are melodramatic lab sequences, crazy camera angles, lurid sex scenes, and a glut of increasingly nutty creature effects. Add in the thoughtful deconstructions of parenthood and the insight into genetic evolution and I should be a happy camper, right? A fun genre flick that’s comfortable enough in its own thematic depth to throw in some wild gore and zany action sequences. Why am I not obsessed with this movie?

(Before I get any more involved in my own personal struggle, I want to say now that if you haven’t seen “Splice,” go. Go watch it. I totally recommend it. Believe me I wouldn’t drag you through a post full of neurotic ambivalence just to tell you not to see a movie.)

Get the rest… AFTER THE JUMP
(more…)

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we pity the poor Babysitter. Monday we found out why these darlings are hunted. Come back Friday for the conclusion.

I don’t know how the story of the intercourse-interloping hook murderer plays out these days – the inset latch that adorns most modern car doors doesn’t seem especially conducive to bloody-hook dangling. Likewise, “hitchhiker” is a distinctly 20th century identifier. Vanishing or not, a trail-schlepping wayfarer with a hopefully extended thumb would confound even the hippest wagoneer or pony express messenger. So that whole police- or phone company-traced call coming from inside the house thing? Nothing to worry about, right? The legend is quarantined in the 1960s, a primitive ape of a horror story, thwacking an analog phone receiver against a monolithic switchboard to the swelling soundtrack of a droning dial tone.

Well, no. Not exactly.

It’s true that the initial story was rooted firmly in the days of land lines and ancient analog phone hook-ups, when a few patient taps to the receiver button could make intra-house Jerky Boying possible, but unlike the aforementioned door handles, which made it increasingly difficult for murderers to lose their deadly prostheses to inadvertent chastity warnings (though probably much easier for murderers to simply click open the door and bury their tines into the writhing flanks of the intertwining lovers), technology kept pace with the psychos. Despite the death of the veritable Cro-Magnon phones of the (club) swinging 60s, in-house murderers were quickly afforded new means of telephonic harassment in the form of multi-line phone systems (note that in many versions of the babysitter v. homicidal stranger story, one of said babysitter’s employers is a doctor, a fact that lends veracity to the presence of a second phone line in the house). Then, of course, everyone got cell phones, which put every babysitter (not to mention every babysitter-employing landline-reliant household) just ten digits away from the hungry fingers of the merciless sadist upstairs. Give it a few months and the stab-happy psychotics will be Skypeing their victims from portable media devices.

Do the evolution… AFTER THE JUMP

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It’s happening again. This time, though, it’s all about the Mothman.

You have already been acquainted, albeit briefly, with the drill: I look up a popular American cryptid (e.g., the Mothman) on three foreign language Wikipedia pages and summarize the results (including the requisite [sic]-implied Google Translate nuggets). You try to match each of the three versions to the Wikipedia site on which you believe it originated.

If you want to. Otherwise, proceed straight to the answers. There’s no reward for right answers, good effort or savvy investment advice. And if there were, it would be something packed with asbestos and covered in blood, and nobody would want it.

(If you’re unfamiliar with the standard American telling of the Mothman, read this English-language Wikipedia article.

As a jazz-dancing midget in a Twin Peaks dream sequence once said, “Let’s rock!”:

Your Language Choices:

a.) Russian
b.) Japanese
c.) German

Mothman:

1. After repeatedly referring to Point Pleasant’s red-eyed antagonist as “man-moth,” this brief account of the flying humanoid’s spooky spree ends with several possible real-world explanations, including the popular notion that the man-moth was a misidentified bird and a theory that “in the 60-s test of a new type of weapon that causes hallucinations in humans.” The page’s final hypothesis, titled “hypothesis of genetic errors,” makes the lofty suggestion that the man-moth “appeared during the experiment in a secret lab, and ran all three of these creatures, which then allegedly capture.” The page also cites a supposed 1980 “New York Times” article that described three New Yorkers’ encounter with a creature similar to the man-moth. “Witnesses said that he had a hard face.”

2. This Wikipedia’s Mothman page admits there’s a possibility that, given the creature’s occasional linkage to cattle-mutilating aliens, the Mothman “may be a Vampire To act or he would be a Rite been invoked with animal blood.“ The page also recounts a thrilling Illinoisan Mothman encounter: “1951 being the correct description of the Mothman, was allegedly seen on Chicago, and this flying.“ One day later? The Chicago Earthquake. Coincidence? This Wikipedia article says, “No way!“ – “Allegedly wanted the Mothman help people to get out of their houses to safer outside.“ Chief among this page‘s rational explanations for the winged, bird-taloned monstrosity? Some kind of bear.

3. Chock full of familiar Mothman history and wholly unfamiliar possible explanations, this site lovingly refers to the creature as the “Mossman” (occasionally, “Mosman”) and explains that “Many of the witnesses, but did not see a moment Mossman, Mossman was face to remember is not much more, with glaring red eyes shine.” The page’s subsequent list of Mothman theories includes the “Curse of indigenous theory,” which claims that there’s an “interesting and conformity” between legends of the Thunderbird and Point Pleasant’s “area onceIndian, Shawnee TribeCurse”; and the “Pet Alien Theory,” which identifies the Mossman as “the idea of animals for experiments on Earth.”

ANSWERS AFTER THE JUMP!
(more…)

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we pity the poor Babysitter, check back Wednesday and Friday for more.

“We’ve traced the calls! They’re coming from inside the house!” Not exactly a shocking twist these days. Let’s face it: the elements that make urban legends so compellingly repeatable and readymade for national ubiquity (not to mention fun) – bloodshed, panic, sexual disaster, embarrassment and grotesque coincidence – are the same things that make them so falsifiable. Only so many people’s cousin can have the same friend who got a cheek full of spider eggs, a candy apple full of razors or a snizz full of frozen hotdog before folks start wising up. The legends manage to live on because each new generation of kids represent blank slates upon which someone’s gonna scratch out a Pepsi and Pop Rocks death equation or caricature a hook-handed killer. At the same time, these legends undergo the inevitable cultural makeovers required to ensure that they neither outstay their welcomes nor develop unsightly anachronisms.

So even if the call isn’t coming from inside the house… even if there aren’t even any calls because, clearly, the babysat children’s parents, wherever they me be, are available via portable media devices… the babysitter suffers.

So we have the cash-hungry high schooler whose babysitting experience is repeatedly disrupted by the eerie presence of a life-sized clown doll that, from one fearful glance to the next, seems to slightly shift its position; when she finally calls the parents to ask if she can toss a blanket over it, they have no idea what she’s talking about. Of course, by then it’s too late.

Get the rest AFTER THE JUMP… (more…)

Walk it Off – an abridged compendium of ye olde folk remedies and archaic antidotes culled from UCLA’s Archive of American Folk Medicine

Today’s ailment: Boils

“Shotgun!”

You will need: A Glass of Water; Buckshot
Instructions: Place buckshot into water; Drink water
Note: Substitute water with kerosene to make Ted Nugent’s hangover cure.

White Elephant

You will need: 1 Stick
Instructions: Smear boil pus on stick; Place stick on ground; Boils will transfer to first person who picks up stick
Note: Be careful not to procure your stick in an area frequented by other boil-sufferers lest your attempt at a cure result in the acquisition of additional boils via someone else’s discarded pus branch.

The Last Kind Act of a Burgeoning Serial Killer

You will need: 1 Disturbed Child, 1 Steinbeckian Retard Who Loves All Things, But, Tragically, Does Not Understand His Own Strength, Or Anyone Else Who Has Crushed A Mole To Death With His Or Her Bare Hands

Instructions: Have mole crusher touch boil with hand used for mole crushing

Like Peas in a Pot

You will need: 1 Pot; Peas; Water
Instructions: Fill pot with water; Drop into water one pea for every boil; Hide pot; Never tell anyone about pot
Note: The CIA entrance exam uses the standardized question “When curing your boils, where did you hide your pea pot?” to immediately eliminate unfit applicants; anyone who answers is immediately ineligible for covert government service.

An Inarguably Impressive Bird-To-Stone Ratio

You will need: 1 Saw
Instructions: Amputate afflicted limb

The Alabama Limbo

You will need: An arching bramble grown into soil on both ends

Instructions: Crawl beneath bramble

Note: This cure is only officially considered “Alabama Limbo” if the bramble thorns meet the minimum regulation 2 inches in length and if, after crawling forward under the plant, you reverse back out and pass the corncob to the next competitor.

The Lunch Special

You will need: Lettuce; Tomato
Instructions: Apply lettuce and tomato to boil-ridden flesh
Note: The archive includes a separate cure in which bacon is pressed against the skin, so if you want take the extra step to go full on BLT, it probably couldn’t hurt.

Capricorn’s Pedicure

You will need: Goat; Nail Clippers; Scraper; Water
Instructions: Clip goat’s toenails; Scrape toenails; Ingest toenails and water

“Some Pig! …Also, This Looks Infected. Maybe Consult An Actual Medical Doctor.”

You will need: Spider Web
Instructions: Wrap boils in spider web
Note: If you’re going to seek direct spider assistance, you’ll want to learn to differentiate between Charlotte, the Shelobs and Tony Shalhoub, whose webs are carcinogenic.

It’s Not Like He’s Doing Anything Else…

You will need: A Nearby Wake Honoring A Person Scheduled To Be Buried The Following Day
Instructions: Attend wake; Approach corpse; Ask the corpse to take the evil with him; Leave without talking to any other attendees

Find the Fiend

Below are descriptions of three grotesque monsters. Two of them are merely the fictional creations of popular artists; one is a creature that has actually been reported. Can you Find the Fiend?

a.) This gilled, razor-clawed man-fish is known for terrorizing day-tripping teenagers.

b.) This legendary monster can supposedly be summoned by witches to enact revenge upon those who have wronged its summoner.

c.) Though human, this ruthless, burly killer is alleged to have had all of his teeth replaced with those of a ferocious dog.

Answer AFTER THE JUMP

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Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. Monday we heard about Snallygaster’s slave scaring history and Wednesday it saved the newspaper industry.

Prohibition was a drag. And not just because all the legal booze had been flushed down congress’ toilet. While destitute souses gave up their livers to searing shots of fuel-ready methyl alcohol, white-collared sots hired like-minded chemists to re-nature chemically denatured alcohol into an unforgivably potent, though non-toxic-ish, liquor (the “girly drinks” of the modern college campus have roots in this era as the alcohol was so potent that upper class juiceheads turned to all nature of seltzers, tonic waters, juices and citrus to sand the edges off their cocktails), and the government, desperate to stay one step ahead of the socialite-employed Dr. Feelgoods, pursued increasingly elaborate denaturing schemes, involving the addition of powerful toxins, including cyanide, to large shipments of industrial alcohol. Poor drinkers were often permanently blinded or killed by low-quality, high-proof poisons while the wealthy, egged on by the once-passive activity’s newfound lawlessness, descended into new levels of decadence. Despite the controversial ratification of the eighteenth amendment, alcoholism in America was at an all time high.

Meanwhile, rural moonshine stills began pumping out a steady supply of corn whiskey and pure grain alcohol. The wilds of Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains were host to a cast of lone shiners, well-connected bootleggers and industrious drunks, all of them firing up (with varying degrees of success) illegal stills. Along with the clangs, hisses and host of acrid odors inherent to the production of moonshine, there were explosions and fires and bloody conflicts between smugglers. With Federal prohibition agents inevitably Toucan Samming their way through cities and towns, hot on the pungent trail of speakeasies, stills and saloons, the shiners had cause to be nervous. Fortunately, they also had an historical ace up their collective, sour mash-stained sleeve: The Snallygaster.

We’ve already made one tenuous connection between Maryland’s beaked and feathered reptilian antagonist and Jersey’s own nefarious Devil (the suspiciously coincidental timing of the Middle Town Valley Register’s hoax), and, lo, here’s a another: The Jersey Devil myth was supposedly perpetuated by the loose cadre of runaway slaves, criminals and, yes, even moonshiners, who had turned the monster’s supposed stomping grounds into their own lawless, pastoral Xanadu. The more terrified folks were to enter the aptly named Barons, the less likely it was that the community of scoff laws would be discovered, hassled or caught. The Snallygaster, too, served this general fearful purpose, but the recruitment of this particular insidious cryptid was, by several measures, far more ingenious than the Piney’s spooky whisperings.
The Snallygaster as bootlegger sentry had three things going for it:

Find out what they are… AFTER THE JUMP (more…)

Jason has killed a lot of folks with a lot of different tools. His victims may wonder, “Who is this man? And why is he murdering me?” Meanwhile, we the viewers want to know, “What is that tool he’s using? And what’s its history?”

Wonder no longer.

Today: Syringe

As used by Jason in: Friday the 13 Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

Victim(s): Gang Banger 1

Nobody likes getting a shot. But also, nobody likes getting shot. Now pretend you have to choose one or the other. See? Shots aren’t that bad. (That clever word joke has inspired me to write a book where a killer “shoots” people with an injection of molten copper that he got by melting bullets. “.44 caliber… 10ccs… 1 chance of survival… 0 if you don’t already have liquid metal for blood… Sharpshooter!”) The earliest syringes date back to ancient Rome, where they were used to treat medical complications. Additionally, many Romanologists agree that “Roman Syringe” would have been a good title for an “In Utero”-era Nirvana b-side.

A syringe doesn’t necessarily include a needle – “Syringe” merely refers to the body of the tool, including a plunger, barrel and nozzle. In ancient Egypt, for example, primitive syringes were used to suck cataracts off of people’s eyes. In fact, before the advent of syringes, medical licensing exams included a hickey test that judged a doctoral candidate’s oral suction capacity, as cataracts had to be removed via traditional mouth suckage. In the liquid substance industry, hoses are attached to syringes, which are then used to draw liquid substances out of barrels.

DID YOU KNOW THAT union policy dictates that all syringe liquid substance-drawing assignments be based on the seniority of the team member? A 35-yearer might get to syringe out the barrel of chocolate syrup. The 5-yearer probably has to syringe out the barrel of tomato juice (I wanted to say scorpion eggs, but they shovel those). DO YOU KNOW WHAT kind of factory uses those ingredients? SOMEONE TOLD ME it was a shoe factory. DO YOU THINK they’d let me taste some of the chocolate syrup? I’M hungry.

Get the rest of the lesson AFTER THE JUMP…

(more…)

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we focus on the Snallygaster, on Monday we looked at the beast’s slave scaring past!

These days, there are plenty of failing newspapers so hard up for cash that they can barely afford the nails to board up their doors. Shrinking page counts, reduced dimensions and an inability to successfully monetize online content have all contributed to the imminent downfall of the publishing industry. Luckily, I have a solution.

During the first years of the 20th century, Maryland journalists George Rhoderick and Ralph Wolf watched their home paper, The Middletown Valley Register, take a financial nosedive. (Reading some archived online content, it’s not hard to see why. The June, 7 1895 edition, for example, contained this urgent bulletin: “Mr. William E. LIGHTER and wife of near Funkstown, Washington county, were
visiting relatives in this place on Sunday and Monday last.”) Surely the men were familiar with the area’s olden day whisperings of a heptaphobic dragon, and perhaps they’d also heard about the rash of so-called “devil” sightings that had swept New Jersey just three years prior. Either way, looking back at their subsequent actions, it’s hard to tell whether the men saw their plan as a wild gambit aimed at the paper’s salvation, or just a merry cryptozoological jape intended to see the publication off with an inhuman scream. Either way, when they published the first erroneous account of a local Snallygaster sighting, it became immediately clear that, despite the dour mood in the accounting department, someone was still reading the Register.

The 1909 Snallygaster hoax was a carefully orchestrated affair that began with a printed letter of warning written by a fretful Ohio man who had witnessed a big bastard dragon monster storming towards Maryland. After peeing all of his clothes, including a headdress he inherited from an Apache ancestor, he thoughtfully decided to warn the soon-to-be-dragon-stricken state’s inhabitants. (I know the first thing I consider when I see an inhuman monstrosity is its probable destination based on the approximate direction of its homicidal rampage.) Predictably, the next report came out of the Old Line State itself and featured testimony from a rurally based kiln operator who saw the horrific winged beast taking a well-deserved nap that ended with a drowsy banshee scream and a quicksilver ascent into the darkening sky.

Get the rest AFTER THE JUMP…
(more…)

A couple weeks back I wrote a series of posts about Kuchisake-onna, Japan’s infamous slit-mouthed woman. For the third installment, fearing that, owing to my relative ignorance of Japanese culture, I was woefully misrepresenting/misinterpreting an important folktale, I used Google translate to read authentic (and grammatically butchered) versions of the tale on the Japanese-language Wikipedia site. Then I looked up the Japanese take on the Jersey Devil. Why? To make myself feel better about butchering the country’s canonical urban legends (or, as I’m sure I would have argued at the time, to revel in the inherent mutability of oral tradition that exists between cultures, even in a media-saturated, post-post-modern age). I was not disappointed. The Japanese version, or, more accurately, understanding, of the Jersey Devil was awesomely nutty and involved a bunch of kids finding a big, crazy egg in the forest. Probably they thought they were hatching a Yoshi.

Anyway, I thought it would be a fun to look at the story of the Jersey Devil on three other international Wikipedia pages, summarize the results (including the requisite [sic]-implied Google Translate nuggets) and have you folks try to match each of the three versions to the Wikipedia site on which you believe it originated.

If you want to. Otherwise, just, you know, go straight to the answers. There isn’t a prize anything. And if there were, it would be something undead or coconut flavored or both, and nobody would want it.

(If you’re unfamiliar with the standard American telling of the Jersey Devil, here’s a Wayback Machine link for you)

Okay! (Rubs hands together creepily) Here we go:

Your Language Choices:

a.) Russian
b.) Italian
c.) German

1.) This version of the legend states that the devil’s mother was a witch who abandoned her malformed 13th child in the swamps of New Jersey, where the “beast of a humanoid form would become malignant over time.” This account also adds this unfamiliar detail: “In 1740, The local priests exorcise these marshes, preventing the monster to kill people, but exorcism last hundred years, and according to local stories the Jersey Devil continued to feed on men.” Also, apparently “from 1909 his popularity grew, over time it was believed that this was a Chupacabras From unnatural speed.”

2.) This Wikipedia site’s only entry for “Jersey Devil” is for the season 1 “X-Files” episode of the same name. Though most of the page is devoted to summarizing the episode (“Mulder, alone watching a dark alley near the forest, where according to Jack roamed the forest devil.”), there is a footnote containing this summary of the Jersey Devil story: “The legend of ‘The Devil Jersey’ known since the XVIII century, descriptions of the creature vary, but most of it ‘sees’ as a stealth, sneaking up on the cattle and attack him.”

3.) Easily the most thorough of the three entries in question, this language’s Wikipedia page offers the standard Mother Leeds version of the story, along with a variant in which the devil’s birth was the result of a gypsy curse, and a version in which “the devil is originally been a human child, who locked his mother in the cellar. According to another tale of the Jersey Devil was at the door, knocked three times and is said to have asked his mother to let him in, but the mother did not want a devil and sent him away.“ The page goes on to cite the frequent comparisons of the Jersey Devil to El Chupacabra, but imediately puts the kibosh on the possibility of any real connection, stating that “The Chupacabra is not traditionally depicted as a biped,“ and helpfully reminding readers that “the devil has never been described as prickly.“

ANSWERS AFTER THE JUMP

(more…)

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we focus on the Snallygaster, come back Wednesday and Friday for more!

I’ve always loved words that carry a sense of their meaning within their phonetic pronunciations. You don’t need to know what “vile” means to infer that it probably doesn’t describe something desirable. Likewise, “mush” sounds inherently unappetizing. It’s in this spirit of efficient verbiage that I bring you the tale of the Snallygaster. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “Snallygaster,” I’m immediately certain of two things: 1.) it’s some kind of animal; 2.) it’s totally bughouse bananas. True, my initial imagining – a flame-farting alligator with a giant snail shell – isn’t entirely accurate, but it’s no farther out than the abandoned carpet warehouse next to the ballpark.

Maryland’s Snallygaster is part bird, part reptile, sometimes tentacled and perpetually ticked off. Half-reptile, half-bird sounds evocative, until you remember that many classic folkloric dragons are just that – giant, feathered lizards with bad tempers and a wicked set of wings. Its name doesn’t represent a concerted effort to encapsulate the ferocious mutant’s hideous visage into a single descriptive, multisyllabic sobriquet, but rather a concerted, if failed, Anglican attempt to pronounce the German term “Schneller Geist,” meaning “quick spirit.” See, the mid-1700s found a rabble of German immigrants setting up shop in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Much more AFTER THE JUMP…

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Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we focus on the Tooth Fairy, Monday he questioned why we value baby teeth to begin with. Wednesday we delved into the bloody origins of the legend.

On the barest cultural level, if you strip away the membranous wings, packed wallet and any over-eager pseudo-anthropological interpretations, all the tooth fairy really amounts to is the narrative spoonful of sugar that helps the inevitable biological medicine – specifically, the terrifying reality that all of one’s teeth are about to loosen and drop out – go down. Quite simply, kids are less apt to be scared by the unique and uncomfortable process of losing their teeth if that process comes with its own smiling, magical (and accordingly wealthy) benefactor. On a literal level, if you strip away the glittery trappings, all the tooth fairy really amounts to is an otherworldly home invader with a cryptic agenda and a free pass into a nation’s worth of children’s bedrooms.

Fittingly, one of the primary talents of the horror genre is processing sugar back into bitter, bitter medicine by exploiting the darker side of pleasurable activities and joyful traditions. Sex, parties and road trips frequently serve as typical set-ups for mounting bloodbaths. More to the point, Santa Claus, another breaking-and-entering denizen of popular folklore, has repeatedly been portrayed standing on the woodsman’s side of a bloodied axe. Is it really all that surprising that the tooth fairy has, likewise, been depicted as a nefarious trafficker of living nightmares?

Given the conclusions we’ve arrived at thus far, “Every legend has its dark side.” seems like a more than fitting tagline for a horror movie about the tooth fairy. My two favorite things about the so-taglined 2003 horror film “Darkness Falls” are the adorable Emma Caulfield (for anyone aware of my Buffy obsession, this requires no explanation), and the fact that the ending credits had to be extended to 11 minutes in order to pad out the film’s meager 75-minute runtime. My least favorite things are all the aspects of the film that are actually relevant to this post. Basically, a disfigured woman who, because she gave out coins to children who lost their teeth, was known as the “Tooth Fairy,” is wrongly accused of child murder and blah blah blah. Now, when a kid loses a tooth, her ghost shows up and kills them. Likewise, the 2006 straight-to-video “The Tooth Fairy” centers on a witch who murders children for their teeth. (It might be the ghost of the witch. I can’t honestly say that I care.) Additionally, “Hellboy II:The Golden Army” and Graham Joyce’s novel “The Tooth Fairy” both explore the darker ramifications of this magical nighttime marauder. (Apparently there’s also an episode of “All in the Family” where Archie Bunker refers to an effeminate dentist as the “tooth fairy.”)

Get the rest… AFTER THE JUMP (more…)

Walk it Off – an abridged compendium of ye olde folk remedies and archaic antidotes culled from UCLA’s Archive of American Folk Medicine

Today’s ailment: Snake Bite

Why Settle For The Local When The General Will Do?

You will need: Moonshine
Instructions: Drink moonshine
Note: This method is a twofer – the hair that moonshine puts on one’s chest can be removed and used to sop up excess venom.

Li’l Chomper’s Finger Wigglin’ Toxin Easement

You will need: A child born with teeth
Instructions: Have toothy kid employ innate healing powers in curing snakebite

…It Made Sense On Paper

You will need: 1 Snake With Less Potent Venom Than Original Bite-Delivering Snake
Instructions: Irritate less poisonous snake until it bites victim of first, more poisonous snake bite
Note: A funny way to irritate the snake is to grab it with both hands and dance with it while pretending it’s a woman. This is extra irritating to male snakes.

Chariots Of Poisonous Snakes

You will need: Speed; Determination; Score By Vangelis
Instructions: Immediately after bite, race snake to nearest river; Win race

Just Don’t Use The Peanut Butter This Time

You will need: 1 dog that has survived snakebite
Instructions: Have dog lick snakebite; Reward dog with Beggin’ Strip

One Foot In The Grave

You will need: Shovel

Instructions: Dig hole; Place bitten limb into hole; Fill in hole; Remain until feeling not poisoned
Warning: Method does not work if snakebite is above the neck; Method immobilizes you such that you are open game for all area snakes.

Countersnakewise Healing Massage

You will need: Baby-soft hands
Instructions: Rub bite in opposite direction of that in which the offending snake coiled

Guess What?

You will need: Chicken Butt (Live)
Instructions: Apply live chicken’s anus to the wounded area.
Note: Method works best if snakebite is above the neck.

The Twin Peaks Church Service

You will need: The ability to recite prayers backwards
Instructions: Recite prayers backwards

Lauren Bacall: “You Do Know How To Cure A Snakebite, Don’t You?

You will need: A buddy; Chewing gum
Instructions: Have buddy blow three times into afflicted’s mouth
Note: For maximum healing, perform simultaneously with poultry anus compress

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we focus on the Tooth Fairy, Monday he questioned why we value baby teeth to begin with.

The tooth fairy started life as a mouse that started life as a fairy. Or, in some tellings, a fairy who started life as a mouse. I know. Not the radiation-laced tale of shame and vengeance for which most of you were probably jonesing. And the fairies’ nemesis? An evil, tyrannical king. For our purposes, though, he’s an evil, tyrannical king with a plasma cannon for a hand. So, according to this French fairy tale (called “La Bonne Petite Souris,” meaning “The Good Little Mouse”), there was a happy queen who was all crepes and smiles until the evil king from a different castle started blowing up all the cafes and boulangeries with his triple-barrel plasma arm. Fortunately, the queen was friends with, depending on the version, a good little mouse or a just-above-average fairy who agrees to lend a helping paw, or tiny, unsettling fairy hand with creepy little painted fingernails. The mouse then proceeds to transform into a fairy (or vise a versa), plant itself under the king’s pillow and, come nightfall, knock out all of the king’s teeth, thereby, chasing away the shadows of war (You’d think that this would just make the king angrier, but for some reason it drives him crazy and topples his empire. Maybe the diamond power cells for the plasma arm were hidden in his molars.)

A fairy, some teeth, a pillow – that’s most of the ingredients right there. Cut out the king and equip the miniscule hero with tooth radar and a slush fund (also make it take off that insipid beret) and you’ve got yourself the tooth fairy.

Unfortunately, the specifics of this transatlantic process’ evolutionary particulars remain shrouded in mystery. Some saucy folklorists even argue that the French fairy tale and America’s hardest working flight-capable civil servant are entirely unrelated. After all, in the French story, the fairy goes on a perilous mission to liberate a dying nation; in the American story, the fairy just sort of dodders around with a change purse and a trash bag full of dental waste. Perhaps, then, she’s more closely related to British house fairies, like Brownies – naked, scruffy mensches who tidy a home at night, or even churn butter and thrash grain. Or like the elves from the classic Grimm’s fairy tale “The Elves and the Shoemaker,” about a group of industrious, mystical scamps who make with the grunt work for a destitute cobbler. As long as there’s a supernatural race willing to devote their powers to hand-cramping minutia in the name of the ever-entitled human race, why not assign one to the disposal of useless, cluttersome bones? (Not all house fairies were good. Despite their seeming enthusiasm for chores, some Brownies were known to un-tidy a house that was too neat, and Boggarts got up to all sorts of poltergeist-style domestic shenanigans.)

Get the rest AFTER THE JUMP…
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Sure, the monsters that stalk through horror films aren’t great guys but they aren’t all bad. Matt Finley investigates the Upside Of Evil…

I just re-watched the 1997 horror film “The Relic,” and I gotta say: Not bad. It makes you pine for the bygone days of leading lady Penelope Ann “Cute as a Bug’s Ear” Miller, and R-Rated horror films that were less about graphic torture and gore than they were about a superstitious cop and a sexy, hard-nosed evolutionary biologist using suspect science and street smarts to immolate a CG monstrosity. While the late Gene Siskel’s assertion that the film’s primary antagonist – Kothaga, a wily, mutated beetle-mohawk-lizard monster de-braining its way through Chicago’s Museum of Natural History’s staff – could “hold its own with the Alien” is enough of a stretch to dislocate something, the Stan Winston-designed creature definitely managed to a do a number on my preconceived notions of beetle-mohawk-lizard monsters. For every heart Kothaga broke, and every head he ripped off, ate parts of and then discarded, he did some nice things to:

Encouraged the Museum to Up its Exhibit Quality

Basically, if you’re the curator of a museum, you want to make sure that all the exhibits you’ve intentionally displayed are at least as interesting as the incidental stuff that just happens to be wandering around. It’s why there aren’t any art museums in the red light district. Additionally, if something’s actively murdering patrons, you should make it your beeswax to ensure that said patrons are risking their lives for a reason. A stuffed giraffe and a water tank that doesn’t make a whirlpool because the button broke aren’t going to cut it anymore. Maybe attach wires to all the dinosaur bones and host an elaborate prehistoric marionette show where the skeletons act out scenes from “The Land Before Time” and “The Crying Game.” Or wax down the main hall and let everyone use the mummies like boogie boards. Maybe just get a liquor license, a bigger tank and fix the button. No matter what you decide, no one should be leaving the museum saying that the coolest thing they saw was the freak beast that glory-holed their head bone.

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