by Sady Doyle
TELEVISION
Bates Motel. Created by Anthony Cipriano, Carlton Cuse, and Kerry Ehrin. A&E, March 2013.
A gritty teen reboot of Psycho in which Norma is still around, its considerable charms are summed up by a scene in which pensive high schooler Norman Bates does his homework while listening to Katy Perry’s “Roar.”
NONFICTION
Douglas, John, and Mark Olshaker. Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit. New York, NY: Scribner, 1998.
Douglas does for serial killers what Ed and Lorraine Warren did for demons, portraying them as the inevitable monsters created by twentieth-century nuclear family breakdown. Tells us that the cure for serial killing is “more love” shortly after he explains why fourteen-year-olds should be sent to adult prisons.
Gollmar, Robert H. Edward Gein: America’s Most Bizarre Murderer. New York, NY: Pinnacle Books, 1984.
Ed Gein’s full confession and psych evaluation are available for purchase online, thanks to the thriving and morally questionable serial-killer memorabilia market. Alternately, there’s this, by the judge who ruled on his case—a weird mix of titillation and legal transcript. Be forewarned, there are photos.
Schechter, Harold. Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original Psycho. New York, NY: Pocket Books, 2010.
Poor Augusta.
THEORY
Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1978.
On the construction of the female psyche within patriarchy, and specifically how girls are hollowed out and made into mothers.
Dinnerstein, Dorothy. The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. New York, NY: Harper Colophon, 1977.
Argues that all misogyny ultimately arises from our relationships with our mothers, and that it’s women’s role in training us to be loyal to a destructive, patriarchal order—not their individual sins—that makes us so angry at Mom.
Janisse, Kier-La. House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films. Surrey, UK: FAB Press, 2012.
Janisse is all over this book, but I’m especially indebted to her thoughts on Margaret White and maternal madness.
CONCLUSION: THE WOMAN AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODS
FILM
Argento, Dario. Suspiria. Streaming. Rome, Italy: Produzioni Atlas Consorziate, 1977.
More a visual experience than a story, but key to the evolution of the genre. The witch emerges from a dreamlike, cloistered female space, like a nightmare, or a secret, or a memory of something long ago.
Bava, Mario. Black Sunday [Remastered Edition]. Streaming. From a story by Nikolai Gogol. New York, NY: Kino Lorber Films, 2012.
A witch is resurrected from the dead after being tortured and executed, with the intent of possessing her descendant, a fragile and virtuous maiden who happens to look exactly like her.
Biller, Anna. The Love Witch. Streaming. Brooklyn, NY: Oscilloscope, 2016.
A technically brilliant recreation of ’70s witchsploitation (though Biller herself says she was aiming more for Hitchcock) that asks why we find women’s desire for love so threatening.
Dunne, Griffin. Practical Magic. DVD. From a novel by Alice Hoffman. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros., 1998.
If the Lilith Fair could be broken down and distilled into a concentrate, it would be this movie, a golden-toned ’90s rom-com in which Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman light candles, listen to vaguely funky folk music, have wild girls’ nights over a margarita, and intermittently just straight-up murder dudes and play with their corpses.
Eggers, Robert. The Witch: A New-England Folktale. Streaming. New York, NY: A24, 2015.
A faithful and frightening story about the witch as imagined by early Americans. Very good, even if it does end with a goat whispering to a teen about the forbidden allure of full-fat dairy.
Fleming, Andrew. The Craft. Streaming. Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 1996.
About half of all women my age carry the image of a black-lipsticked, dagger-wielding Fairuza Balk in some hidden place behind their eyeballs, like a trademark or a bad tattoo. If I find the mark of The Craft on someone, I know we understand each other.
Fleming, Victor, George Cukor (uncredited), Mervyn LeRoy (uncredited), Norman Taurog (uncredited), and King Vidor (uncredited). The Wizard of Oz. DVD. From a novel by L. Frank Baum. Beverley Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), 1939.
Margaret Hamilton’s performance as the Wicked Witch was so notoriously terrifying for small children that she booked an appearance on Mister Rogers to show kids why they didn’t have to be frightened of the Wicked Witch—which then had to be pulled from all future reruns because parents wrote in to complain that she had scared their children.
Guadagnino, Luca. Suspiria. Streaming. Santa Monica, CA: Amazon Studios, 2018.
Posterity will no doubt judge me harshly, but I like it more than the original, if only because it’s more on my wavelength. Guadagnino’s witches are all sinew and sweat, gushing blood and gaping labia, somehow intensely erotic without ever being sexy. The movie works itself into such a primordial, biological groove that it feels inevitable when this, too, turns into a story about birth and what it means to be a mother.
Moore, Hollingsworth. Daughters of Satan. Streaming. Beverley Hills, CA: United Artists, 1972.
Hilariously blatant example of how men of the ’60s and ’70s used witches to work out their sexual hang-ups; a young stud discovers his wife is the reincarnation of an evil witch he burned in a past life. Her coven’s occult rituals center around torturing naked ladies in dungeons.
Polanski, Roman. Rosemary’s Baby. DVD. From a novel by Ira Levin. Los Angeles, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1968.
This exists. Given the other things Polanski is famous for, let’s just leave it there.
Romero, George A. Season of the Witch. Streaming. Beverley Hills, CA: Jack H. Harris Enterprises, 1973.
this Page.
TELEVISION
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Created by Joss Whedon. The WB, March 1997.
Contemporary feminists often look askance at creator Joss Whedon, and the decision to kill off Willow’s girlfriend provoked a legendary amount of backlash. Still, the impact of the series—particularly Willow Rosenberg, the first teen TV heroine to have a girlfriend at all—is generational.
NONFICTION
Schiff, Stacy. The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem. New York, NY: Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company, 2015.
A good, comprehensive look at the actual Salem witch trials, the source for so much American witch mythology.
THEORY
Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2004.
The witch as a figure of reproductive power, eliminated so that patriarchy could better estrange women from their own generative forces.
Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess—Twentieth Anniversary Edition. New York, NY: HarperCollins eBooks, 2011.
Witchcraft as metaphysical feminism, replacing patriarchal abstraction and violence with reverence for women, bodies, and nature. Just as interesting when read as a political treatise as it is when viewed as a spiritual text, and—in both cases—more influential than many of its kind.
Acknowledgments
I asked you in my last book, I’m asking you now: please, please, don’t skip these acknowledgments.
I signed the contract for this book when I was eight months pregnant. I wrote it while caring for a newborn, then a baby, then a toddler. If you’ve had kids, you know what this means, but if you don’t: I wrote on broken sleep and no coffee, I wrote in hour-long bursts when the baby was napping, I wrote while I used m
y other hand to steady my nursing daughter on my lap. On most days, I thought I would be unable to finish the book, or that, if I did finish, it would be unpublishable.
If this book was even a little enjoyable, if you got from the front page to the back page without giving up, the credit for that goes to the following people:
Melissa Flashman, my literary agent, prompted me to write a book proposal while I was still reeling from my first book, and—improbably, given that I was very pregnant and the proposal was an outline about how much I liked T. rexes—she sold it. She is very good.
The first and worst draft of this book went to the wonderful editor Taylor Sperry, who is incredibly generous and supportive even when you hand her something you clearly put together on about one point five total hours of sleep. She got me to stop talking about movies and start saying what I meant.
The next draft was handled by the equally wonderful Kirsten Reach, who was careful and scrupulous even when editing very silly things, and who helped me cut an unruly manuscript down to its core. I would not have gotten to the blood river without her.
I have been exceptionally lucky in my publisher. Valerie Merians, co-founder of Melville House, took personal responsibility for this book in its late stages, a huge compliment, and one I’m deeply grateful for. Katie Haigler did very patient copy editing, which is impressive, given that I had no idea how to cite half the things in here; if you find mistakes in this book, they are not her fault. Sue Rella, the production editor, has been unstinting in her support. Everyone at Melville House has been wonderfully kind to me and to my work. I could not be more proud to work with them.
I’ve also worked with a second set of women, whose work is frequently less visible, and without whom this book could not have happened. To my daughter’s childcare providers—Amanda, Ellis, Maribel, the women who take care of her now, and the people who will take care of her in the future while I give readings or interviews—I extend some very, very deep gratitude that is still probably insufficient. You were kind to the person I love, and you helped me keep the job I love, and I cannot hope to return the favor. I can only hope that someday this country adequately values all you do.
Finally, to my family, particularly three of you: My mother, who used to read me Shirley Jackson stories at bedtime, and who steadied me through that first year and took countless panicked phone calls. My husband, who worked from home for a year just to make sure I had the support I needed, and who read those marriage and family chapters without once suggesting I tone it down. My daughter, a wild and astonishing creature, who teaches me every day why it’s important to create a better world.
Notes
1 “mutilated male:” Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. by Arthur Platt, book 2 (Adelaide, Australia: University of Adelaide, 2015), pt. 3, https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/generation/book2.html
2 “Nothing misbegotten or defective”: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates & Washington Ltd., 1920), Question 92, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1092.htm.
3 The medical establishment still: Carolina Moreno, “Many Women Don’t Recognize Their Heart Attack Symptoms. Many Doctors Don’t Either,” Huffington Post, December 14, 2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/women-heart-attack-symptoms_us_5c1400e2e4b-009b8aea72a45.
CHAPTER ONE
1 “a young married man”: “Grave of Mercy L. Brown,” Quahog.org, http://www.quahog.org/attractions/index.php?id=50.
2 “Timothy Mead officiated”: Michael E. Bell, Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011), p. 216.
3 “The savage in man is”: Henry David Thoreau, journal entry, September 30, 1859, “The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau,” http://thoreau.library.ucsb.edu/writings_journals_pdfs/J15f4-f6.pdf.
4 “It is remarkable that”: James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study In Magic and Religion, 3rd ed., p. VII, vol. 1 (London: MacMillan and Co. 1913), p. 22.
5 “that her gaze may”: Ibid., p. 46.
6 “the deeply engrained dread”: Ibid., p. 76.
7 “they will wither”: Ibid., p. 96.
8 In American folk magic: Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb, Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 35.
9 “The best blood is”: Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (Berlin: Ordo Templi Orientis, 1938), ch. 3, http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/engccxx.htm.
10 “There is no limit”: Pliny, Natural History (London: Taylor and Francis, 1855), 28.23, http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusLatinTexts&getid=1&query=Plin.%20Nat.%2028.23.
11 “Congress with a woman”: Ibid.
12 “Were she to handle”: Frazer, The Golden Bough, p. 80.
13 “if a menstruating woman”: Elyse Goldstein, “Bringing New Meaning to the Status of a Menstruating Woman,” ReformJudaism.org, April 16, 2016, https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/mtzora/bringing-new-meaning-status-menstruating-woman.
14 “are seized with madness”: Pliny, Natural History, 7.13, http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusLatinTexts&getid=1&query=Plin.%20Nat.%207.13.
15 “all spells of the magicians”: Ibid 28. 23.
16 “During the last several decades”: Kenneth W. Behrendt, The Physics of the Paranormal (1st Book Library, 2003), ch. 5.
17 “rarely has true poltergeist”: Ibid.
18 “repressed anger, hostility”: Penny M. Kroll, “Poltergeist Activity in Young Women,” Paranormal Studies and Inquiry Canada, http://psican.org/index.php/ghosts-a-hauntings/684-poltergeist-activity-in-young-women-.
19 “the effects of hormones”: Behrendt, The Physics of the Paranormal.
20 “Mental illness or drug/alcohol”: Sharon Day, “Mind Fuck Tuesday: Women, Periods and Poltergeists,” Ghost Hunting Theories, November 30, 2010, http://www.ghosthuntingtheories.com/2010/11/mind-fuck-tuesday-women-periods-and.html.
21 “My God! What is”: Stephen Wagner, “The Terrifying Amherst Poltergeist,” ThoughtCo, https://www.thoughtco.com/the-terrifying-amherst-poltergeist-2595941.
22 “Tina had an urge”: “Christina Resch Boyer,” Murderpedia, http://murderpedia.org/female.R/r/resch-tina.htm.
23 It was the top-grossing: Jeremy Fuster, “ ‘It’ to pass ‘The Exorcist’ As Highest-Grossing Horror Movie Ever,” The Wrap, September 20, 2017, https://www.thewrap.com/it-passes-the-exorcist-to-become-highest-grossing-horror-film-ever/.
24 “frontal assault”: Roger Ebert, “The Exorcist,” December 26, 1973, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-exorcist-1973.
25 “the Devil is in every”: Anthony Breznican, “The Exorcist: 10 Creepy Details from the Scariest Movie Ever Made,” Entertainment Weekly, October 31, 2012, http://ew.com/movies/2012/10/31/the-exorcist-10-creepy-details/3/.
26 “She had noticed a”: William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1994), ch. 3.
27 In one 1976 poll: Michael Getler, “Cries of a Woman Possessed,” The Washington Post, April 21, 1978, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/04/21/cries-of-a-woman-possessed/94bf2fd3-8e64-482d-869d-1f929851ca8f/?utm_term=.24c8099d56d1.
28 “the devil is in me”: Felicitas D. Goodman, The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 1981), p. 36.
29 “her face was like”: Ibid., p. 31.
30 “paws”: Ibid., p. 32.
31 “The Catholics, stupid”: Exorcism of Anneliese Michel transcript, translated by TanGo AKA Heretic Helper, Diabolical Confusions, March 21, 2011, https://diabolicalconfusions.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/transcript.pdf.
32 “I know that we”: Elizabeth Day, “God Told Us to Exorcise My Daughter’s Demons. I Don’t Regret Her Death,” The Telegraph, November 27, 2005, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo
rldnews/northamerica/usa/1504158/God-told-us-to-exorcise-my-daughters-demons.-I-dont-regret-her-death.html.
33 “Mother”: Ibid.
34 “the few exorcists that”: Heather Saul, “Catholic Church Trains More Priests to Perform Exorcisms,” The Independent, January 8, 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/catholic-church-trains-more-priests-to-perform-exorcisms-9046578.html.
35 “75 percent are women”: Louise Couvelaire, “Exorciste, un metier d’enfer,” Le Monde, January 10, 2014, http://www.lemonde.fr/m-actu/article/2014/01/10/exorciste-un-metier-denfer_4345499_4497186.html#Dhs8JZHkIWfgo4dl.99.
36 “I reportedly screamed”: Linda Chaniotis, “I Was Subjected to Exorcisms as a Child to Treat My Epilepsy,” The Guardian UK, September 21, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/21/i-was-subjected-to-exorcisms-as-a-child-to-treat-my-epilepsy.
37 “experts in medical”: John Hooper, “Vatican Lays Down New Rules for Exorcism,” The Guardian, January 27, 1999, https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/27/religion.uk.
38 “depressed and had lost”: John T. McQuiston, “Sister of Dead Long Island Teen-Ager Offers Account of Killing in Exorcism,” The New York Times, January 21, 1998, http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/21/nyregion/sister-of-dead-long-island-teen-ager-offers-account-of-killing-in-exorcism.html.
CHAPTER TWO
1 “Lmao who’s here to look”: Ashley & Ashlyn, “Final Destination 3 Ashley & Ashlyn Tanning Scene FULL SCREEN VERSION,” YouTube, August 10, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHqVPRtr5as.
