Episode 502 - Sticks

Thanks for reacquainting me with "Sticks"! Kudos to Wagner for managing to tell a story that has a Lovecraftian atmosphere but doesn't try to slavishly replicate the style of the originals; most attempts to replicate HPL's distinctive authorial voice are about as successful as his own efforts to phonetically render regional accents.

Chad, I can't express the disappointment and sorrow that you didn't make a "deadpan" joke. As a result, I am compelled to point this out which lowers the estimation of me by everyone here. Joking aside, I also have to point out that this story envisions a fisherman trudging long distances with an iron pan strapped to his waist. Iron is HEAVY. I go fishing and my pan is made of light steel or aluminum (back then it may have been made of tin). I like the vision that our hero defends himself against a lich by using the thing that has weighed him down for miles and he just can't take it anymore. "Take that, lich! And if that doesn't work, at least I won't die with that fifteen-pound weight attached to my belt!"

Someone tell that captain from the Pitch Black Manor song that laughing and mumbling about lost loves is NOT the accepted protocol when one’s ship is going down. I don’t care if there’s an unnameable horror involved or not. You’ve got to at least make a note in the captain’s log. Keep flouting maritime procedures and pretty soon—PIRATES. Is that what you want, captain? Pirates?!

Dammit, Blake!

Tara Murphy

I had read this story years ago and completely forgot what it was called until this episode came out! Thanks for the jolt to my memory, I really love this story; suspicious iconography has Such a great creep factor.

I am a long-time Karl Edward Wagner fan so this goes straight into my veins. More please! I second the suggestion of Where the Summer ends. But a couple of dark-horse candidates would be Dark Muse, one of his Kane stories, a great sword-and sorcery adventure with more than a touch of things man wasn't meant to know about it; or The River of Night's Dreaming, a gonzo tale featuring The King in Yellow and some Stuart-Gordon-style sexing up of the mythos.

“It should have been ridiculous, it wasn’t.” is probably the text I’m going to request be on my tombstone. I *want* to be known as the guy who died trying to fist fight a wolverine, but (given my family history) heart disease is going to get me first.

Hey guys, really liked this show, Sticks is definitely a badass story. On a barely related note, I was re listening to your second Strategies episode and realized the powers of curse you guys have is still in full swing! Chad to Chris : "You have to wear a mask for six months out of the year, what kind of mask do you wear?" Too brutal. I personally am rocking a metal shirt I turned into a bandanna(it was its time, it had to be cut off me after I broke an arm skating), and was wondering if you guys opted for the classic sick-mask or something a little more improvised.

Long time listener, first time poster... (Except a while back when Chad and I had a, frankly, sweet, even sentimental, email exchange about our respective pets who had recently passed, which evolved randomly out of a question I had about the old HpPod page's otherwise near-perfect technical structure.) Anyway, while Kennedy did have a secretary named Evelyn Lincoln, Lincoln's none of Lincolns were named Kennedy. It is true they both were sorcerers though, which is always left out of the history books. I've been meaning to try to offer more constructive comments, and petty-sarcasm, to the mix, mostly out of jealousy of the commentators who's names are ready each month in the Very Special Episodes...

Loved this episode as always but I hope the HPL revisit episodes are still going to happen. After the 500th episode (much congratulations!) I kinda went back and listened to some of my favorite episode and one of which was The Night Ocean. Love that episode but you "wasted" a lot of time on the cannibal story and in the end you both mentioned you wish you had more time to discuss the story. I really love the story as much as i love you two talking about it so I really wish you could maybe discuss it further.

Tom Král

The discussion on what seeing a non-purposeful symbol somewhere remote can trigger in your mind was relatable. Years ago I was doing plant studies in a remote part of Scotland. I spent most of my days looking at the ground, but at one point, as I was in a small woodland, I glanced up to see a dead crow, hanging from a string only a few feet away. That primitive brain thing kicked right in, because I had no idea why what I was seeing could be. The bird was not tangled at all, it was clearly done deliberately, as if a symbol or totem. And despite having permission to be there, I got the hell out of there as fast as I could. When I told the person I worked for (a local) he chuckled and said that some farmers will place dead crows as a warning to other crows to stay away from an area. So a message of sorts, but felt very primitive and totemic. On a more pleasant note, the fight with the frying pan had me picturing the protagonist as Sam Gamgee from Lord of the Rings. Made the heart scene even weirder, I can tell you.

LOVED this episode. You guys are kicking off the second 500 episodes stronger than ever - thank you. On a side note, the monster at the beginning got exactly what was coming to him. Liches get stitches.

Wow this episode was great! More Wagner please! After the show ended I immediately went and picked up a copy of Cthulhu 2 (they should really have called it "2 Fast, 2 Eldritch," but oh well). As others have noted, I also thought of Ambrose Bierce's use of Lich in "The Death of Halpin Frasyer." But I won't elaborate because as Chad said back on that episode "LichGate was a terrible chapter in our country's history, and I wish you wouldn't mention it on this show."

I always have a very clear picture of the liches in my head when I read this, and I realized I'm imagining the picture often attached to the creepypasta "The Russian Sleep Experiment." Evidently it's a Halloween decoration called Spasm, but holy cow is it nightmare fuel! Here's a link if you dare: https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/286639/familiarize-yourself-with-the-russian-sleep-experiment-soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture/

Christine M

I just emailed you Lee Brown Coye’s original articles that Karl based his story on.

For a few years I've been listening to this podcast while walking my dog at midnight, in the woods- and this episode was the first to have me nervously looking over my shoulder whenever I heard a noise!

Aelius Saionji

Awesome guys!!! Thank you so much! I’m so excited to dive in!

Alan Ricks

I've never read "In The Pines," but since it's clearly named after the Appalachian folk song of the same name, they could follow it with the Silver John tale "Shiver In The Pines," which features a variation of the tune.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

Thank you, gents! Great stuff! I always appreciate it when the forces of evil are not stupid. Recognizing that publishing certain images and stories can bring about their evil schemes much faster than creeping around stone basements is most satisfying, On a side note, I was curious if there might be a way to make a parallel between liches appropriating old stick symbols and the Nazi's doing something similar with the swastika.

I’m glad you guys covered this one of Wagner’s short stories. It’s been a while since you all had a jump scare in a story you covered (well, except those ghosts of werewolves—they’ll get you every time), and this one delivers with the appearance of the lich! Though “Sticks” may be Wagner’s best known short story, and deservedly so, his writing career was pretty varied in theme, tenor, topic and style. And I know a couple later stories he wrote are bleak. I think his general disillusionment ultimately drove his writing, but also made for some well developed works. Perhaps he took different life lessons than Shea (one of his contemporaries), but not quite as rough (read: angry) as Harlan Ellison. Since you liked “Sticks,” I’d recommend “In the Pines,” and maybe “Where the Summer Ends.” They’re both early works and have good atmosphere. I never read any of his Kane books, but I am aware that he wrote more parodies and pastiches later in his career.

Ben A

No palaver about Lee Brown Coye? Dudes! What are you on about. He is totes the Stick Man! The Coy boy!

Peter Larsen

Why wasn't the story about fly fishing in the Styx?

Lich is indeed an old timey word from Old English "lic" for corpse. Anglican churches sometimes have a roofed gate known as a lich gate. The first part of a funeral service was conducted at the gate and so the roof was meant to protect the priest and mourners from the elements. Lich Gate would make a pretty good band name imo

Well, I had a frying pan tied to my belt (as was the style at the time)...this was, oh back in nineteen dickety-two. We called it dickety because Nyarlatothep had stolen the very concept of forty. Oh I chased that rascal dickety six miles, piping tekeli-li all the way...

Thanks for another excellent episode! Enjoyed this one. I was thinking "lich" was an old-timey word for "corpse." Mostly based on "lichyard" as a synonym for graveyard. There's apparently a reference to lichyard in a poem from 1893, but a lot of the internet results for the word reference its use in Game of Thrones. I am really looking forward to coverage of The Veldt. I had to read the story in about 5th grade for the Junior Great Books program in the 80s and I remember thinking it was pretty messed up back then! Interested to hear your take on it.

Excellent episode on an excellent story, but wait, that song is an absolute banger!

Brian J

Also, sidenote: this episode taught me that I reflexively cringe when I here someone pronounce Wagner "WAG-ner" and not "VAHG-ner."

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

So far as I know, the folkloric origin for the term "lich" simply denoted a motile corpse. AD&D codified the modern concept of the lich as an undead spellcaster that has attained undeath by anchoring their soul to an object--called a phylactery--but as you noted, it was published concurrently with this tale, not before it was written. Lest I be mistaken, it's actually in Clark Ashton Smith's fiction that you first find "lich" used to describe an undead magician--I may be wrong, but I think it happens in "The Return of the Sorceror." From what I remember, Smith was using it in the generic sense of an undead, and it just *happened* to be an undead spellcaster, but hey--it seems to have caught on, hasn't it? As per the Blair Witch inspiration, I could see it, but I suspect there's a more interesting one to note. What with the Lovecraftian cult, the mouldering ruin out in the wilderness, the stochastic latticeworks of wicker, and the mummified and dessicated bodies, this *had* to have been inspiration for the first season of True Detective. The show even one-upped Wagner--said wilderness ruin was filled with a large-scale, winding structure of wicker, so when you entered that makeshift temple you were walking *inside the sticks.* Lastly, I should note an aversion to iron is actually some UK folklore regarding witches and ghosts, which has its pre-Christian roots in the fact that iron warded off the Fae. While I dislike the whole "ancient Europeans migrated to the Americas" trope because it can have problematic undertones, I think it was used well here with the novel inclusion of that detail. The ancient proto-Druids/cultists/whatever fled Europe because the *Iron Age* was happening, and their most dread bane was becoming a ubiquitous part of all the surrounding communities.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

I'm sure a lot of guys felt sympathy for the protagonist waking up covered in blood and clutching some stranger's ticker. We all know how awkward it can be to wake up with an unexpected "heart on."

Thanks!! I've heard of this event, but never read the actual quote!

Andrew M. Reichart

I love the atmosphere of dread Wagner weaves as Leverett goes into the basement, sees the table, etc. And the hand-grab still gets to me!. It really is one of the creepiest Lovecraftian scenes in fiction. However, during this re-read, I ruined it by saying to myself, "Frying pans, who knew?" when Althol gets it. (As a parent, I guess I've watched Tangled a few hundred times since I first read this story!)

Christine M

“As near as I can recollect, it must have happened in the spring of 1938. I was trout fishing on a little known stream south and west of DeRuyter NY. It was a fine, clear stream, but difficult to fish due to dense outcroppings of bushes in some areas and long stretches of open water in others that were hard to get at without being seen.” “There were all sorts of strange contraptions, sticks from trees and bits of boards nailed and wired together in a fantastic array. I cannot describe them adequately, so will have to draw pictures. Sometimes these structures were stuck into a pile of stones, or a stone wall. Sometimes even, they were nailed to trees. One I remember could have been a child’s tree-house - it had a definite third dimension., except it was so abstract and useless, it was just a conglomeration of sticks and wire. woven into the fabric of tree-branches. Roughly two miles from my starting point, I came upon the ruins of a house.” - Lee Brown Coye, “Scrying Stones and Dolmen”

William Rieder

Awesome! Glad to hear you're doing this one. I ran into it in a collection called "The Dark Descent" and it's stuck with me for years.