Wide Atlantic Weird

Cian explains changes coming, a new show, a slight change of theme, and some behind-the-scenes info!

Cameron McCormick returns to discuss cryptozoological bestiaries that stretch the boundaries of belief with huge numbers of undiscovered critters running around.

*NOTE: I made an error in referring to The Bigfoot Filmography. The book I actually had in mind was Cryptid Cinema by Stephen Bisette. I’m away from home for a few days but I’ll fix that when I’m back!

LINKS:

WoW on BuyMeACoffee:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wideatlantic

Cameron on Mastadon:

https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]

Cameron’s blog:

https://thelordgeekington.wordpress.com/

Trey The Explainer: The Native Bigfoot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zJhJsdoTYQ

The Screaming Skulls by Elliot O’Donnell:

https://archive.org/stream/CreepyStories/OdonnellTheScreamingSkullsAndOtherGhosts_djvu.txt

‘True Giant’ source article, the Straits Times, 196:

https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/straitstimes19610212-1.2.77

Commendable Commotion Podcast

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/matthew-tannam-elgie

Blake Smith’s article on the Kentucky Goblins:

https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2024/01/guns-and-goblins-what-really-happened-during-the-kentucky-alien-invasion/

In celebration of the book 'When The Stars Are Right, HP Lovecraft and Astronomy' by Edward Guimont and Horace A. Smith, Eddie returns to the cabin. We tackle the Old Gent Of Providence and his fascination with turn-of-the-century astronomy, as well as his various connections to the great and good of early planetary science fiction! Including, but not limited to:

-Teenage Lovecraft meets Percival Lowell, and worries he's been too harsh on the latter's Martian canal theories

-Lovecraft plays a skeptical Scully when the good people of Providence think they've seen a Christmas mystery airship!

-Lovecraft writes amateur astronomical columns for various newspapers

-Lovecraft writes a (rather fantastic) short story set on what we'd now call a charmingly old-fashioned Venus

-How Lovecraft used elements of old Mars literature to plot At The Mountains Of Madness

-And HPL's thoughts on Jules Verne, the War of the Worlds, Edison's Conquest Of Mars, and LOADS MORE.

LINKS

When The Stars Are Right by Edward Guimont and Horace A Smith

Edward Guimont on Twitter

Buy Me A Coffee

We chat with Dr Francis Young about that favourite WAW topic, the theory of 'Pagan survivals!' Subtopics include:

-what we do know about pre-Christian European socities

-how did the Pagan survival theory come about in Victorian times

-the significance of yew trees

-the Green Man

-connections to alien greys

LINKS

Francis Young Twitter (that’s what I’m calling it)

https://twitter.com/DrFrancisYoung?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

Twilight Of the Godlings (and other books by Francis Young)

https://drfrancisyoung.com/publications/

Buy Me A Coffee

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wideatlantic

Hit the road with WAW on tour through the highlands of Scotland! We visit the home of Nessie, meet Felicity the Inverness Mystery Big Cat, hear what Lovecraft had to say about the monster of the Loch, go ghost-hunting at Glamis Castle, and have a close call with the Great Grey man of Ben McDhui in a most unexpected location!

From the gilllman of Robert W Chambers' 'The Harbour Master' to the monstrous apes and aquatic dinosaurs of 'King Kong,' fiction has informed the cryptozoologists who went out into the dark corners of the earth seeking 'real' mystery creatures. Justin Mullis returns to talk us through his article 'Cryptofiction.' Get ready for a monster-load of influential stories from writers both familiar and obscure. Talk includes:

-Famous cryptozoologists who were influenced by monster fiction

-The influence of ‘The Lost World’ (of course!)

-Victorians, dinosaurs and ‘real’ dragons

-Victorian stories of surviving dinosaurs and the origin of Mokele-Mbembe

-Arthur Conan Doyle’s non-‘Lost World’ cryptids

-The 1925 Lost World film, King Kong, and novelisations of Kong (with extra dinosaurs!) and connections to Atlantis

-‘The Monster of Partridge Creek’ a fictitious monster that turned up as a ‘true’ story

-Lord Dunsany, the ‘Club Story’ and cryptozoology

-Early fiction featuring Bigfoot-like creatures, including ‘The Cairn’ by HR Wakefield and ‘Rogues In The House’ by Robert E Howard

-Robert W Chambers and ‘In Search Of The Unknown’ - a template for cryptozoology from 1904?

References:

-Cryptofiction, Justin Mullis, 2019

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315184661-19/cryptofiction-science-fiction-rise-cryptozoology-justin-mullis

-Justin’s talk on Robert W Chambers for The Last Tuesday Society

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-cryptozoological-fiction-of-robert-w-chambers-justin-mullis-tickets-635838198167

-Justin’s writing at Adventures In Poor Taste:

https://aiptcomics.com/author/justinmullis/

-Justin’s academia.edu with links to his writing

https://bgsu.academia.edu/JustinMullis/CurriculumVitae

-Wide Atlantic Weird: Fairy Euhemerism with Justin Mullis

https://player.fm/series/wide-atlantic-weird/for-fear-of-little-men-euhemerism-and-secret-fairy-peoples-with-justin-mullis

-Lake Monster Traditions, Michel Meurger, 1988

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lake-Monster-Traditions-Cross-cultural-Analysis/dp/1870021002

-Jacques Collin de Plancy, who wrote ‘Voyage To The Centre Of The Earth’

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

Brontosaurus, A Faded Star Rises Again, Prehisoric Pulp

https://prehistoricpulp.com/2017/08/05/brontosaurus-a-faded-star-rises-again/

Dinomania, Ulrich Merkl

https://aiptcomics.com/2015/11/24/dinomania-the-lost-art-of-winsor-mccay-the-secret-origins-of-king-kong-and-the-urge-to-destroy-new-york-review/

-‘Creatures of Another Age’ edited by Richard Fallon (review by Justin Mullis in AIPT) which features ‘The Dragon of St Paul’s’ which prefigures the climax to The Lost World

https://aiptcomics.com/2022/06/30/creatures-of-another-age-dinosaurs-scifi/

Kong Unmade by John Lemay and others

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kong-Unmade-Films-Skull-Island/dp/179807799X

Kong: An Original Screenplay, Edgar Wallace

https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/kong-an-original-screenplay-hardcover-by-edgar-wallace-5969-p.asp

The Monster of Partridge Creek, Georges Dupoy, 1908.

https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Partridge_Creek_Monster

‘In Search Of The Unknown,’ Robert W Chambers, 1904

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18668

We're chuffed to welcome the esteemed hosts of MONSTER TALK, Dr Karen Stollznow and Blake Smith, to the cabin to talk about the 1957 movie THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN. Written by the tremendous, influential British writer Nigel Kneale, this has got to be one of the best, and most interesting, cryptic films ever made. The fact that it hails from the days of 1950s yeti-mania makes it an important marker of a cultural cryptozoological moment - but even so, Kneale finds ways to put his own stamp on the monster. Our conversation includes:

-The work of Nigel Kneale

-Orientalism in the film

-the trope of psychic relict hominoids

-pelts & paws cryptozoology vs mystical interpretation

-the character ‘Tom Friend’ representing the real-life monster hunter Tom Slick

-real-life expeditions that inspired the movie

-Yetis as understood in their own countries

-Cryptozoology and colonialism (again!)

-when to show the monster?

-Cryptid movie recommendations

LINKS

Monster Talk: Yeti Stories You've Never Heard Before (a listening must!)

Karen’s Stollznow's books

In Research Of podcast

The Horror Podcast

Bigfoot: Life and Times of a Legend, Joshua Blu Buhs, 2009

Creature From Black Lake

The Mothman Prophecies (2002)

Howard Bury’s Footprints: a WAW episode about the origins of the term Abominable Snowman

The Conspiracy Skeptic Podcast

Lauren the Gothic Bookworm opens the tomb of maybe-classic The Mummy from 1999 as we discuss action movie tropes, Orientalism in Hollywood, the golden age of Egyptology in the popular imagination, and Arnold Vosloo. Digressions include:

-The horror-centric directions the film almost went in

-The lure of the ‘golden age of Egyptology’ in Western storytelling

-Creative use of dodgy CGI

-The mummy as an Indiana Jones clone, and Orientalism in lost race fiction

-Inconsistent geography in the movie

LINKS

-the gothic bookworm on Twitter

-Mummy Mania Mondays on Twitter

-The Anatomy Shelf on Twitter

-International Society For The Study of Egyptomania

Professor Christine Ferguson visits the cabin to discuss the later adventures of Professor Challenger! In 1925, Arthur Conan Doyle's serialisation of 'The Land Of Mist' began in the Strand magazine. This novel was the author's great attempt to make his decades-long interest in spiritualism palatable to the widest audience possible. Did he succeed? Did he portray the world of 1920s London accurately? And why did he choose Professor Challenger, the maverick of the scientific world, to play the stodgy establishment character? All this and more, in The Mists Clear Away!

Includes:

-All about the Edinburgh Edition of The Land Of Mist

-Arthur Conan Doyle’s own spiritualism

-Why did ACD turn to Professor Challenger for his great spiritualist novel?

-Spiritualism as a specifically feminine or masculine movement?

-Challenger as the Establishment, rather than the Maverick

-ACD’s use of real-life Belfast researcher William Jackson Crawford

-ACD’s actual apocalyptic spiritualist messages

-Lord John Roxton goes ghost-hunting! What was ACD’s inspiration for this episode?

Links:

Beyond Belief: Literature, Esotericism Studies, and the Challenges of Biographical Reading in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Land of Mist. Professor Christine Ferguson, Brill, 2021.

https://brill.com/view/journals/arie/22/2/article-p205_2.xml

Dinosaurs, Disintegration Machines and Talking to the Dead: The Wild World of Professor Challenger. Dr Stephen Carver, Wordsworth Editions.

https://wordsworth-editions.com/professor-challenger/

The Lost Worlds of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger Series, Conor Reid, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 2017.

Edinburgh University Press New Critical Editions

https://edinburgh-conan-doyle.org/

How many Lost World connections can we make in this episode about turn-of-the-century ghost writers searching for extinct animals in South America? Dr Edward Guimont is at hand to tell the tale, bringing essential palaeontological and colonial context for South America in 1900.  Hesketh Hesketh Pritchard, creator of Flaxman Low, was sent on this expedition for news mogul C Arthur Pearson. Featuring:

-a potted history of the Occult Detective genre

-Hesketh Pritchard himself as a product of Empire

-Hesketh Pritchar visits Haiti, cringe ensues

-Playing cricket with Arthur Conan Doyle and other literary links

-The theory of ‘American Degeneracy’

-A seemingly fresh Mylodon skin sample is brought to London, scientists astounded!

-A link to the Piltdown Man hoax

-Various expeditions to search for evidence of the Mylodon

-Politicians trafficking in paranormal ideas - some things don’t change!

-And euhemerism returns! (see last episode)

LINKS

Edward Guimont on Twitter

Buy Me A Coffee

On The Track Of Unknown Animals, Bernard Heuvelmans, 1955

The Terrible Occult Detectives, Grady Hendrix

The Chronological Bibliography of Early Occult Detectives, Brom Bones Books, Tim Prasil

Casting The Prunes: Flaxman Low Triumphant, Grey Dog Tales

Through The Heart of Patagonia, Hesketh Hesketh Pritchard, 1902

Flaxman Low, The Story of Baelbrow, Hesketh Hesketh Pritchard