starring Dr. Hal !
THE GRAVEYARD RATS
June 12, 2020 10:00pm
--AN EPISODE FROM OCTOBER 18th, 2019, was podcast originally as a lead-up to Halloween of that year. It was one of the first Ask Dr. Hal! shows to begin with a reading from the corpus of Supernatural Literature. The story is within the bailiwick of the Horror genre, an exercise in claustrophobic Grand Guignol, from American writer Henry Kuttner. One element of the gruesome narrative features, without backstory or explanation, a revenant, or re-animated corpse. Interestingly (to some, we must suppose) this trope precedes the films of George Romero, who in them virtually created that type of monster for the contemporary era. It is by no means the point of the story, just an added detail. Overall, the reading is an unapologetically morbid exercise-- which we concede. This sort of material caused some fans of the show to object to the grisly direction these introductory readings seemed to be taking. But such criticism was, however, overwhelmed by generally positive reactions from the majority of listeners who made their opinions known on the controversy. As long as circumstances prevent us from doing new and live podcasts, we must continue to present these "dead" re-runs as the only substitute we can offer. Will we escape to the surface, metaphorically, or be smothered, beneath the Graveyard of our hopes, by the crushing weight of the Pandemic?