Wide Atlantic Weird

Get ready for a look back at a strange world: 2001 was a different time. A time of baggy jeans, wallets on chains, and a strangely heavy, angry, and proudly stupid style of music that inexplicably became mainstream. It was the era of Nu-Metal: a subgenre now so hated and disgraced that even those of us who were fans are happy to pretend it all just never happened.

For myself and my brother Donal, one of our key memories of this bizarre time is the book Slipknot: Behind The Sickness Inside The Masks. It’s an absurd, juvenile, but breathlessly genuine time capsule of an age that has yet to be enshrined in any sort of nostalgic movement. We loved this book as teenagers and we’re returning to it now.

Slipknot were perhaps the breakout stars of the Nu-Metal era and this book chronicles them at the height of their intensity and bombastic ridiculousness. Get ready for dead crows in jars, shitting on stage, dicks for noses, and rotting cow heads. We discuss Nu-Metal in general, the nature of nostalgia, and why Metallica’s St Anger was terrible.

Live from lockdown, from the cabin in the woods in West Cork and lovely Montreal, Quebec, this is Wide Atlantic Weird; this episode: What You Did Not Create: Slipknot And Nu-Metal Nostalgia.

Join Cian for a quarantine session of brandy and nostalgia at the cabin in this much-delayed episode. If you fondly remember reading (and cheating) through Fighting Fantasy gamebooks in the 80s, this installment has you covered, as Cian talks us through House Of Hell, his favourite FF adventure. It's a haunted house game that really goes into far more disturbing territory than most. Cian spots the influences of Dennis Wheatley in this creepy Satanists-for-kids adventure, and wonders as to the influence of the Satanic Panic too. Whatever the truth, House Of Hell remains an oddly unsettling addition to this genre, replete with cultists, goat heads, sacrifices on altars, and a torturously-constructed puzzle. You may never escape from the House! So roll up your stats, grab some cheese and brandy, and MAY YOUR STAMINA NEVER FAIL! To listen, turn to paragraph 88.

Wide Atlantic Weird on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/WideAtlanticWeird/?modal=admin_todo_tour

House Of Hell App from Tin Man Games

http://fightingfantasyapps.com/books/house-of-hell/

House of Hell Solution by Lafe Travis

http://yosemite-sam.net/Solutions/HouseHell.htm

With the world in the midst of difficulties and upheaval, we bring you a brief update on the Wide Atlantic Weird status, as well as a short episode about a woman from County Cork who was famous in the 1920s for her mediumship, automatic writing, her follow-up books to the Bible (!) and for telling fortunes for the great and the good. Her name was Geraldine Cummins, and while not well-remembered today, her success during her lifetime tells us much about the state of belief in these ideas in Ireland in the early 20th century.

Wide Atlantic Weird Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/WideAtlanticWeird/?modal=admin_todo_tour

World Famous Psychics & Mystics by Margaret Nicholas

https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Worlds-Greatest-Psychics-Mystics-NICHOLAS-Margaret/804178116/bd

Reading Lovecraft is a great way to discover new writers and strange old pseudoscientific theories. In this episode I discuss how through Lovecraft I first learned of Margaret Murray and the infamous Witch-Cult Hypothesis – the idea that the ‘witches’ persecuted in early-modern witch trials were in fact the survivors of an ancient pagan cult. Yes, not only did people take this idea seriously, but they ran with it. Really ran with it. This episode of WIDE ATLANTIC WEIRD delves into what Murray believed, what others made of it, and the long-term effects of this particular odd belief. Cthulhu, wicca, Dennis Wheatley, Rosemary’s Baby: they all have their part to play in ALL OF THEM WITCHES: Margaret Murray And The Witch-Cult Hypothesis. So burn your black candles, put on your wicker antlers, crack open an ale and sit by the fire for a bewitching (sigh) episode of WIDE ATLANTIC WEIRD.

Sources:

Wide Atlantic Weird on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/WideAtlanticWeird

The Witch-Cult In Western Europe, Margaret Murray, 1921

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witch-Cult_in_Western_Europe

The Call of Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft, 1928

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.aspx

Supernatural Horror In Literature, H. P. Lovecraft, 1927

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx

The Golden Bough, James Frazer, 1890

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx

The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley, 1934

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_Rides_Out

Rosemary’s Baby, 1967

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary%27s_Baby_(novel)

Paperbacks From Hell, Grady Hendrix, 2017

http://www.valancourtbooks.com/paperbacksfromhell.html

Cursed Britain, Thomas Waters

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300221404/cursed-britain

On An Underwood Number 5, Todd V. Bick

http://onanunderwood5.blogspot.com/2019/01/conan-and-little-people-robert-e-howard.html

New England Folklore

https://newenglandfolklore.blogspot.com/2017/06/did-hp-lovecraft-believe-in-witches.html

In the second of our American Militia episodes, we examine the horror that was the 1993 Waco Siege. In February of that year, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms bungled a raid on a religious cult, the Branch Davidians, and their leader David Koresh, who were living in a compound in Texas. What resulted was an hours-long shootout, a 51-day siege, a killer fire, and controversies that still rage today: who shot first and who started the fire? Anti-government conspiracy believers still see the Waco siege as evidence that a sinister New World Order seek to control all patriotic free Americans. Join Cian and Ali to help you decide what you think.

Perhaps you see the Branch Davidians as child-abusing, gun-hoarding religious nuts who needed to be stopped for the safety of all concerned, before Waco became another Jonestown. Perhaps they were innocent Americans minding their own business, victims of a tyrannical government who wanted nothing less than to show that they could and would destroy their own citizens just to show their power. Or, just perhaps, the Feds are just as human, just as hubristic, and just as subject to petty, meaningless mistakes as the rest of us – except that when they screw up, they screw up big and people die. This episode of Wide Atlantic Weird will take you to the plains of Texas to find answers in THE SHADOW OF WACO.

In 1999, a supposedly-real ‘horror film’ was released that showed us virtually nothing while filling us with a terror of virtually everything. Those of us who were young and impressionable at the time still owe our fear of camping to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, an upstart indie film that expertly utilised internet marketing, folklore and terrific world-building to create a movie that exists to this day within a kind of urban-legend mystique, proving that American folk-horror can be done right!

Join Cian on the porch of the cabin for a beer and find out what exactly folkhorror is, why THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is a legit example of it, and why, though it may be hard to get lost in America these days, it’s a lot easier than in Europe!

Haunting Atmosphere – CO.AG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI5U6aDcQEo

Folkhorror.com definition

https://www.folkhorror.com/

Filmschoolrejects.com definition

https://filmschoolrejects.com/folk-horror/

Sticks by Karl Edward Wagner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oua7ByrC6s

True Detective Season 1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Detective_(season_1)

Picnic At Hanging Rock

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnic_at_Hanging_Rock_(film)

Sitting by a roaring fire in the Wide Atlantic Weird cabin, Cian delves into a potted history of the Ancient Aliens theory – once a fringe, almost-dead belief, it’s come back with a vengeance, now being one of the most popular paranormal worldviews out there. Statistically, you probably know someone yourself who believes that ancient non-white cultures around the world were incapable of building their pyramids and statues, and needed a little help from the (little green) men upstairs!

But the history of the Ancient Astronauts theory is a strange one, so settle in for a tale that involves pulp horror, H.P. Lovecraft (of course), Swiss conman Erich Von Daniken, and even Jack ‘Call Of The Wild’ London, who provides us with jungle adventure, mysterious extraterrestrial visitors, and loads and loads of racism in CHARIOTS OF THE SLOBS: JACK LONDON AND THE ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS.

The Red One by Jack London

https://americanliterature.com/author/jack-london/short-story/the-red-one

Charioteer of the Gods by Jason Colavito

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/charioteer-of-the-gods.html

Cian and Ali begin their deep dive into the American militia (or Patriot) movement. There are some odd beliefs very particular to America at play here, so we crack a couple of cans and get stuck into the founding of the country and the constitution to find out exactly why grown men like to LARP at being military folks out in the wild woods of backwoods America.

In this episode, we focus on the siege of Ruby Ridge in Idaho, 1992 – an inciting incident that helped to kickstart the modern militia movement. It’s a fascinating and tragic story of a family hiding out in a cabin atop a mountain that became a target for increasingly more militarised police and federal forces. To find out just how this insane situation came to be, why the full force of the US government came down on the Weavers, and how citizens across the country changed their view of their own government as a result of this disastrous siege, take a listen to AMERICAN MILITIA 1: RUBY RIDGE.

Along the way we meet such radical groups as the Aryan Nations and the Three Percenters, we discuss far-right white supremacist bible The Turner Diaries and murderous racists The Order, and amidst this grim tableau we even manage to eke a few laughs out of the life of irascible arch-conservative, anti-government warrior and all-round blowhard Colonel Bo ‘Rambo’ Gritz. And stick around for a made-to-order punk song about the militia movement!

The Scuts

https://www.facebook.com/DutchCourage2013

American Experience: Ruby Ridge (PBS)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ruby-ridge-part-one-suspicion/

Bo Gritz’ Spike Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ9qpjA5AyU

Erase And Forget: Documentary about Bo Gritz

http://eraseandforget.com/

On a dark and stormy night, as London is pelted with rain and lashed by intense winds, the WIDE ATLANTIC WEIRD crew serves you up a BONUS EPISODE. Enjoy a true strange SCARY CLOWN tale from The Ghost Trail’s Faye, then Cian and Ali indulge in their old hobby of bad movie-watching. They discuss infamous mockbuster studio THE ASYLUM, running through the reasons why the likes of Sharknado just doesn’t cut it for veteran bad movie watchers the way Troll 2 or The Room does. If you’ve ever had someone tell you that Asylum films are ‘hilarious,’ we’re here to set you straight.

Having disparaged the studio, our shameless hosts then reveal their own attempts to write movies for The Asylum, sharing their own mockbuster script ideas. See if you can guess what current blockbusters they’re hoping to cash in on with MAD BOYS, BONE ISLAND RUMBLE, and other non-classics. Jim Cameron won’t be beating down their door anytime soon, but this is a fun episode, a little off our usual beat, that WIDE ATLANTIC WEIRD is happy to present!

Haunting Atmospheric Soundscape - CO.AG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tShZcR-YEpc

Pied Piper by Shaolin Dub

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Shaolin_Dub

James Bond est mort ce soir by Circus Marcus

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/CIRCUSMARCUS/Au_revoir/Circus_Marcus_-_James_Bond_est_mort_ce_soir_MasteringBOX

Hard Fight by Tagirijus

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tagirijus/Hard_2018/manuel_senfft_-_hard_fight_1732

Cue 4 by Soularflair

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Soularflair/CUES_for_film_TV_games_etc_DARK/Cue_4_-_African_or_Jungle_vibe-Darker_feel_Soul_Purpose

Season Of The Slasher by Natural Snow Buildings

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Natural_Snow_Buildings/The_Night_Country/Natural_Snow_Buildings_-_06_-_Season_of_the_Slasher

The Ghost Trail Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyswG_oLkVQV9vQNnpJj1_A

Instagram @FayeSewell

https://www.instagram.com/fayesewell/

Cracked Article about The Asylum

https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1698-5-ugly-realities-making-mockbusters-like-sharknado.html

The Scuts

https://thescuts.bandcamp.com/releases

In 2015, a fantastic horror/historical film called The Witch made the rare decision to take the religion and worldview of its characters seriously. Cian and Donal discuss the film, the life and beliefs of 17th-century puritans, the difference between Catholics and Protestants, and other light subjects! This spoiler-ific take on The Witch also touches on (of course) witchcraft itself, the importance of the Salem witch trials, and what makes the film so bloody good.

Permanent Revolution by James Simpson

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674987135

The Battle For God by Karen Armstrong

https://www.amazon.com/Battle-God-Karen-Armstrong/dp/0345391691

The Gillbillies on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/TheGillbillies/

Arnold The Pooch On Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/arnoldthepooch/