Hope, Fusion and the Future
Shawn Smallman, 2017
Shawn Smallman, 2017
Although most of my work over the last 15 years has focused on public policy and epidemic disease, I’ve also written a book about Indigenous religion amongst Algonquian peoples, in particular one evil and old spirit called the Windigo. I recently did an interview for the public radio program Backstory, which is part of their Halloween podcast episode, “American Horror Story.” You can listen to the full episode here, if you are interested in monsters in American culture and history. If you just want to listen to my interview, it is available at the link “Where the windigos are.” Elizabeth McCauley also wrote blog post about the windigo, which has both the interview and a clip from the TV episode of Supernatural that dealt with the windigo. I thought that her blog post did an excellent job discussing media depictions of the windigo, and the issue of cultural appropriation. If you are curious to read more, you might want to look at my book, Dangerous Spirits. Or for an entirely different mystery, please read my account of the ghost ship called the Baltimore, which was found with only a single person left alive aboard. And she was not whom she said. Have a good Halloween everyone.
Shawn Smallman, Halloween 2016
Every Halloween I explore a suitably spooky topic, from a book about an alleged Canadian haunting, to Japanese books on the supernatural. I’ve also suggested some international ghost stories for Halloween. Still, there is no substitute for hearing spooky tales in audio, so this year I will focus on the best podcasts that cover mythology, mysteries and folklore, all of which have at least some international content. I’ve also included podcasts that take a more skeptical and scholarly look at these issues.
The Night Time podcast covers the strange and the supernatural in Atlantic Canada. This is a relatively new podcast, and it has content that would be difficult to find in detail in other venues. In the first episode the creator of the podcast, Jordan Bonaparte, interviewed his own grandfather about a possible UFO sighting. He then interviewed his own grandmother about the same sighting in a subsequent episode. What I like about the series is that the creator carries out his own research and interviews, on topics such as disappearances, visions and archaeology, usually with a strong Atlantic Canadian flavor. Some of the episodes, such as the “Overton Stone,” shed real light on the region’s history. As an Oak Island skeptic, the interviews regarding that topic intrigued me less. I was glad, therefore, that he also recently did an episode (#21) titled “A Skeptical Look at Oak Island and Bell Island,” which consisted of an interview with Brian Dunning of the podcast Skeptoid.
Some of the best episodes of the Nighttime Podcast have dealt with disappearances, such as strange case of Maura Murray in New Hampshire (episodes 14 and 16), and the three episodes that covered the case of Emma Filipoff (episodes 2, 23 and 24), who vanished from Victoria, British Columbia. As always, Bonaparte interviewed people who were closely involved in the cases. For example, in episode 24, he had a lengthy conversation with one man who had been mentioned in an earlier podcast as a possible suspect in Emma Filipoff’s disappearance. Overall, the Night Time podcast is an original podcast with unique content, which will leave you feeling that you are sitting at a kitchen table in Nova Scotia, while listening to a neighbor tell a favorite story. …
Shawn Smallman, 2016