Podcasts
Investigating the Femme Fatales Within ‘Friday the 13th’ and ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ [The Lady Killers Podcast]
“Kill her, Mommy! Kill her!”
“My, my what big eyes you have.”
We like to think we know how to throw down on Halloween, but no one parties like the counselors of Camp Crystal Lake, New Jersey or the residents of Warren Valley. While New Jersey’s summer camp eschews the traditional arts and crafts classes for archery and sculpting with Toxic Boy Mom Pamela Voorhees, Ohio’s picturesque little hamlet hosts a raging street soirée, a plethora of pumpkins, a haunted quarry, and, sure, a gang of princesses who just so happen to be werewolves. Lots to carve here, but who has the knives?
Enter The Lady Killers: A Feminine Rage Podcast.
Dedicated to Female-Identifying Killers in Horror, the latest series from BloodyFM finds co-hosts Jenn Adams, Sammie Kuykendall, Mae Shults, and Rocco T. Thompson discussing a female-identifying killer in the horror genre—and sometimes the wider world of cinema—from Julia and Jennifer to Carrie and Christine. Together, they’ll tell the story from her point of view, decide if it’s “Good For Her” Horror, and answer the most important question of all: Would we die for her?
“I’ve been obsessed with female killers ever since I fell in love with Brenda Bates and her 1,000 candles in Urban Legend,” Adams says about her new series (she’s also the co-host of Bloody FM’s The Losers’ Club: A Stephen King Podcast). “I can’t wait to talk about all the fantastic women who slice their way through the horror genre.”
If you couldn’t guess, the first two episodes center around the femme fatales lurking within 1980’s Friday the 13th and 2007’s Trick ‘r Treat. With Mrs. Voorhees, the group meditates on her muddy motive, and impeccable sweater game, in addition to their favorite counselors and the incomprehensible rules of Strip Monopoly! For the sexy wolf pack, they reminisce about favorite costumes, their love for Sam, the catch-22’s of having boobs, and the importance of always checking your Halloween candy.
Get in losers – we’re going trick-or-treating! Stream both episodes below or subscribe now via Apple Podcasts and Spotify for future episodes that drop every other Thursday. Next up? We’re heading to Sleepy Hollow for a little R&R.
About the Hosts
Jenn Adams
Jenn is a writer and podcaster from Nashville, TN. She co-hosts both The Loser’s Club: A Stephen King Podcast taking frequent deep dives into the work and adaptations of her favorite author and The Girls On the Boys, a podcast dedicated to analyzing the Amazon Prime Series The Boys and masculinity in the action/horror genre. Jenn is a contributor and columnist for Bloody Disgusting, Rue Morgue, Dread Central, Slashfilm, and Ghouls Magazine. She is the creator and author of the Strong Female Antagonist blog and will gladly talk your ear off about final girls, feminism, and Stephen King.
Sammie Kuykendall
Sammie Kuykendall is a frequent contributor and Social Media Specialist for The Losers’ Club: A Stephen King Podcast who hails from Northern California but is based in Chicago, Illinois. When she isn’t reading/reviewing fantasy smut/horror books, she’s either marathoning movies on the couch or listening to her favorite indie artist, Taylor Swift. She is a lover of all things pop culture and is currently working on coping with her non-fictional feelings for fictional characters.
Twitter | Instagram | Bookstagram
Mae Shults
Mae Shults is a queer/trans musician (as Everson Poe) and podcast editor, born & raised in Chicago. She enjoys short walks in the shade, chai lattes, and collecting records. Mae has co-founded several podcasts (including the sadly defunct Underneath It All & The Bull Crow Project), and currently edits Halloweenies. She spent several years creating original music & sound design for various theater productions around the city, and misses it dearly. Tune in for Mae’s strong socio-political opinions, her terrible puns, as well as her incessant thirst (especially for boobs).
Rocco T. Thompson
Rocco T. Thompson is a writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He is a frequent contributor for Rue Morgue where he penned the cover story for the magazine’s first ever Queer Fear special issue. He also served as producer for In Search of Darkness: Part III, the final installment in the popular ‘80s horror documentary series. Rocco has an affinity for Sheri Moon Zombie, killer rednecks, underseen slashers, mummies, Italian genre cinema, post-9/11 horror, and women behaving very, very badly.
Podcasts
America’s Most Haunted: Which House Deserves the Top Spot this Time? [Guide to the Unknown]
So many places claim the title of “The Most Haunted House in America” that it makes you wonder: who’s really got the goods? Kristen and Will of Bloody FM’s Guide to the Unknown are taking a look at places that proudly claim this accolade two at a time for mini-competitions that mean absolutely nothing.
With one previous episode under their belt, this week, they’ve fixed their eyes on the Allen House and the Congelier House.
The Allen House of Monticello, Arkansas, is a beauty featuring columns, turrets, and a tragic history that seems to have led to a ghostly present. Ladell Allen Bonner killed herself by drinking cyanide during her mother’s annual Christmas party in 1948. She was 54 years old.
After her death, her mother sealed the room off, perhaps to contain and cover the tragedy—though some recount her saying it was to keep Ladell inside because she was causing trouble in the house. For years, people who passed the house said they saw Ladell’s shadow in the window of her room. It seemed Ladell was still around. Her internal life before her death was a mystery until the Spencer family moved into the Allen house in the 2000s and pulled up a floorboard in the attic to reveal a treasure trove of love letters that told a story. It seemed that Ladell, who was married to a man named Joe Lee Allen, had been carrying on an affair with her high school sweetheart, Prentiss Savage, for many years – and that his breaking it off may have caused her to take her life.
Now, some of what the family had experienced in the home, like seeing shadow figures, had context. (They’ve even shared video of some family ghost-hunting investigations with son Jacob, adorably taking on the role of Team Leader, mom Rebecca, as Tech Specialist, and dad Jacob presumably in a general support role.)
Then we have the Congelier House, built in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1880 and torn down sometime in the early-mid 1900s. The infamous abode is also known as The House the Devil Built, but it looks like this one is all bark and no bite.
The lore around the Congelier House is mainly focused on sinister events that would precipitate later hauntings, as opposed to hauntings themselves, but the events have been largely debunked. The house probably wasn’t haunted by the ghosts of people who didn’t exist. It seems like it was inhabited by ordinary people living everyday lives – including the actual Congelier family, which gave the house its name (but certainly not the story that goes with it).
The legend goes that the Congeliers were the first to live in the home and, driven mad by her husband’s dalliances with their maid, the lady of the house murdered the other two. It is a classic setup for ghosts’ unrest if you stop there. But whatever pre-teen came up with it went a little too far, adding the detail that soon after, a family friend came over unannounced to find Mrs. Congelier singing lullabies to the cradled, decapitated head of her husband’s mistress.
Then there’s the fictional story of another tenant, Dr. Adolph C. Brunrichter, a mad and murderous doctor who lured women to the home only to murder them and perform experiments with their remains. It was, of course, too late to do anything about it once the authorities realized what he was up to: he had fled. He supposedly turned back up years later in New York, where he evaded the police once again, able to roam dangerously free.
There’s no record of any of this happening, but these stories certainly get points for creativity, and there’s something kind of cool about imagining how they’ve reached us today. They must have been passed around during and after the time the house was standing, and then, luckily, when the internet came around, someone thought to type up a memory about that one house, and it went on from there.
Then boom, this place gets touted as the most haunted house in America. However, in Kristen and Will’s extremely unofficial estimation, it’s gotta lose the smackdown to the Allen House. At least the Allen House was home to people whose stories check out…and one extremely delightful paranormal Team Leader.
For a more in-depth discussion of these haunted houses, check out this week’s episode and subscribe to Guide to the Unknown on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to get a new episode every Friday.
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