Episode Details

PGttCM Season 22.5

1. The Empty House – Algernon Blackwood
   Haunted architecture as organism. Blackwood’s house breathes dread rather than cartoon malice, but the living-house motif is beautifully weird.
   Monster House (2006) – Childhood-scale weirdness. The house is alive. Contained, playful dread.
2. The Yellow Sign – Robert W. Chambers
   Royal decay, masked figures, surreal instability. Oz with the brightness sandblasted off.
   Return to Oz (1985) – Fairy tale gone feral. Surreal but still mythic in structure.
3. For the Blood Is the Life – F. Marion Crawford
   Rural vampire lore before the sparkles. Brooding, tragic undead menace.
   Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) – Campy supernatural with clear rules and heroes.
4. Lair of the White Worm – Bram Stoker
   A beautiful woman animated by something inhuman, romantic obsession, bodily transformation, and grotesque courtship rituals. It’s pulpy, melodramatic, and gleefully macabre.
   Lisa Frankenstein (2024) – Gothic romance and stitched-together identity.
5. The Mummy's Foot – Théophile Gautier
   Playful Egyptological weirdness, romanticized undead, cultural past intruding into the present.
   Bubba Ho-Tep – Aging, absurdity, and pulp undead intruding on the mundane.
6. The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar — Poe
   Scientific hubris, reshaped bodies, moral ambiguity. Wells leans philosophical rather than romantic, but the ethical unease about making life and remaking identity hums in both works.
   Poor Things (2023) – Reconstructed identity and moral experimentation.
7. The Willows – Algernon Blackwood
   Alien presence observing humanity. Nature as a membrane between worlds. The dread is quiet and cosmic
   Under the Skin (2013) – Alien observation and human estrangement.
8. The Damned Thing – Ambrose Bierce
   Unseen predation, rural dread, something ancient and animalistic watching from beyond perception.
   X (2022) – Flesh, mortality, decay, performance.
9. The Jolly Corner – Henry James
   Meeting the ghost of your unlived life. Urban haunting tied to identity and time.
   MaXXXine (2024) – Ambition curdling into occult menace.
10. The Horla – Guy de Maupassant
    A double. Or something that lives alongside you. The terror of self-divis
    Us (2019) – The self divided.
11. The Repairer of Reputations – Robert W. Chambers
    Identity manipulation, hidden social orders, creeping paranoia in polite society. The horror is systemic and intimate.
    Get Out (2017) – Social identity as surgical horror.
12. Old Crompton’s Secret” — Harl Vincent, Astounding Stories, February 1930 —
    A strange old recluse, alchemical obsession, identity/body weirdness, old knowledge pressing into the present.
    Last Night in Soho (2021) – Time bleed and haunted ambition.
13. The Rat Racket” — David H. Keller, Astounding Stories, April 1930 —
    The story has racketeers using rat terror as systemic control, and the “Old Man” behind it becomes a nearly mythic hidden ruler.
    The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) – Conspiracy as metaphysical force.
14. The Man Who Was Dead — Thomas H. Knight, Astounding Stories, April 1930 —
    A weird resurrection/reincarnation premise that starts in folksy argument and slides into uncanny rule-breaking.
    Nothing But Trouble (1991) – Bureaucratic nightmare logic.
15. The Man Who Was Thursday – G. K. Chesterton
    Infiltration, surreal pursuit, shifting identities, bureaucratic nightmare energy. It’s metaphysical weirdness dressed as adventure.
    Monsters (2010) – Borders, othe