Author Topic: Pseudopod 103: Geist  (Read 11220 times)

Russell Nash

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on: August 16, 2008, 04:58:15 PM
Pseudopod 103: Geist

By Chandler Kaiden
Read by Richard Dansky

At first, there was only numb horror.

He couldn’t move his arms, couldn’t catch his breath. Everything was black. The thick stench of mildew, of rust and minerals, coagulated in his nose and throat. Steaming water spilled over his forehead, rained into his eyes, seeped between his lips. Brackish, foul water, full of chemicals.

It seemed to go on forever.

He tried to move. But he was confined, his limbs pressed tightly against his body.

When the water stopped, he heard dull, heavy thumping, like the machinations of an enormous water-logged engine.

The air was thick with steam. The foul water collected around his eyes, spilled into his nostrils, packed his sinuses.

There, in the wet darkness, he tried to drown himself. He inhaled the water. Tried to hold his breath — that breath he’d been instinctively fighting to catch when he came to — and found that he could hold it and hold it and hold it, and nothing happened.

_I want to die._


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Praxis

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Reply #1 on: August 17, 2008, 12:41:05 AM
Although I like the description of how this story starts, where the main character is, how he begins to realise what has happened/is happening, I realised by the end of this one that it was almost at the end of the story and I really didn't care about either character.
***Spoiler*****

The grieving partner wasn't fleshed out particularly and there was no particular reason given for the suicide, it just appeared to have happened out of inevitability.

Meh.  maybe I'm just cold.



The Dunesteef

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Reply #2 on: August 17, 2008, 02:51:29 AM
This one couldn't keep my interest at first, for some reason.  My mind kept wandering.  Eventually, however, it pulled me in, and then I wondered what I missed while my mind was elsewhere.  I think I've figured it out, but I'll probably have to listen one more time, just to see.

It was an interesting idea, a very different ghost story than I've heard before.  I'll be sure to never commit suicide, cuz the last thing I want to end up as is an invisible tube snake thing that gets hurt excruciatingly if anyone steps on me.

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Listener

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Reply #3 on: August 19, 2008, 01:22:05 AM
Did not like.

The reader was trying to sound like Ben Phillips, but he was talking WAY too fast and it just wasn't working.  He should try to sound more like himself, and to slow down.

The story didn't hold my attention.  Oh, wah, wah, horrible life, commit suicide, haunt a bathroom, can't touch the woman you love.  And the writing was clumsy, WAY too full of similies and metaphors that were all constructed the same way.  Not very good flow, IMO.

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ieDaddy

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Reply #4 on: August 20, 2008, 06:13:18 PM
Not a favorite.  Not by a long shot.

Story suffered from two things.  First, narration was not the best, slow-fast-faster-slow.  Second, over-description and metaphors that were just annoying.  Maybe it's just my ADD kicking in, but I really had to work at listening to this one.  Where's the pay-off on this?

I ended up checking out Wikipedia for the definition of "Geist" to see if I'd missed some great "ah-ha" moment beyond Ben's out-tro, and I missed the Jennifer Love Hewitt (Ghost Whisper?) reference.

It also didn't meet my standard of horror.  A guy kills himself and gets painfully stepped on as a ghost.  Couldn't relate to the characters, couldn't put myself in either of their shoes, and the little kid's "I see dead people" scene was less than stellar.  Fits under supernatural, but ultimately the story was as ineffectual and weak as it's main character.

Things I would have liked to have seen.

1. just as a comedy factor, start the after life in the toilet.
2. something more substantial in why he killed himself - other than "I just know I am".  Made him sound like a goth wanna be.
3. The only reason I could see for the woman thinking of killing herself was because she saw Tom's(?) name written in the mirror - I think wanting to end your life should at least have a bit more motivation.  Did he leave her with crushing debt?  is she as much a goth wanna be as Tom?  Why was Tom so much the love of her life that she couldn't go on without him?

As for what would have made the story for me, after learning a bit more about the term Geist - here's more of the outline/direction I would have enjoyed...

* We get sympathy for dorky Tom getting rebuffed by woman (ah, males of the world now relate to the main character)
* Tom is obsessed/driven with this particular woman, queue scenes of him stalking her (females of the world now relate to woman).
* We now find out he's been breaking into her house, flipping through photo albums, reading mail, bugging her computer.
* Tom takes it to the extreme after a final rejection, breaks into her house, gets in her bath and kills himself to teach her a lesson.  Laughing as he imagines the expression on her face when she walks in and sees what her rejections have made him do.
* He reawakens realizing he's now haunting her bathroom - oh joy!  he can finally be with her.
* he continues his obsession, leaving little presents of flowers on the table, dusting, cleaning, leaving love notes electronically on the computer - all of which slowly drives the woman closer to the edge. 
* Tom tried to follow her to work and finds out that he cannot leave the house, as his death is linked to the property.
* Tom realizes that he can push her over the edge - and if she kills herself in the house, they will be together forever.
* queue up more haunting, maybe an internet IM relationship where he controls the computer, etc.
* Woman end up distracted, not sleeping, and Tom is whispering into her subconscious to kill herself.
* She leaves for work one morning and ends up driving off a cliff - Thus escaping from house-bound Tom.
* Tom finds out she died in an accident (newspaper/friends in the house, whatever).
* Tom is now distraught because the woman is beyond his grasp for all eternity, mopes around for 6 months as the house is sold...
*... and then a new woman moves into the house.
* Queue psycho theme.

Yeah, that would have been cool.




Animite

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Reply #5 on: August 20, 2008, 09:27:09 PM
I don't know, I thought the story had some redeeming features. As a semi-claustrophobic, I had these dreams when I was kid about being trapped in the middle of some impossibly small place, usually somewhere in the house, and no amount of struggling or calling for help would free me. Suffice it to say, I found the whole idea of being trapped down the drain an unsettling idea.

The rest of the story didn't hold my interest as much when the creature/worm/golem/ghost-man managed to crawl out of the sink though which made me sad. The first part of the story was the high point, I thought.

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eytanz

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Reply #6 on: August 20, 2008, 11:30:49 PM
This was a rather poor story - it felt to me, listening to it, that the author had some interesting scenes in mind, but no overarching idea of how to connect them together to a narrative, resulting instead in a rather pointless account of how hard it is to be a ghost.



deflective

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Reply #7 on: August 21, 2008, 12:02:52 AM
It also didn't meet my standard of horror.  A guy kills himself and gets painfully stepped on as a ghost.

the story was interesting if only just because it told the story from the poltergeist's point of view and made the afterlife more than floating around in an insubstantial body. this setting is pretty much followed by rote. ghost story from the living's pov? the afterlife is pain and horror and trying to drag the living to join you. a ghost story from the dead's pov? translucence and concentrating to move things.

here we get some idea why a psychic would be in pain at a haunted house.

eytanz's point that the story had the feeling of a disjointed set of scenes is well made. this isn't necessarily all bad since that's exactly what the haunt's existence was.

finally, people questioning if this is horror?



eytanz

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Reply #8 on: August 21, 2008, 12:11:44 AM
One more thought - I think one thing this story really lacks is any sense of the life the man had before his death. We get some glimpses of it, but those mostly suggest he was depressive and unhappy. So what about him made his girlfriend/wife so unable to move on? Was it the presence of the ghost in the house, as he suggests? But it doesn't seem she was on a different path before he started showing signs of his presence. Was it just that the relationship was unhealthily co-dependent? Or was there more too it? I think if the story had answered some of those questions, given the narrator more of a personality than "I killed myself because I felt like it, I love my girlfriend, and I persist in haunting even though it hurts", it would have had more of an impact.



DKT

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Reply #9 on: August 21, 2008, 03:42:44 PM
finally, people questioning if this is horror?

Was there more to that, or did I miss the actual question?  :)


ieDaddy

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Reply #10 on: August 21, 2008, 05:04:54 PM
finally, people questioning if this is horror?

Was there more to that, or did I miss the actual question?  :)

i think that was in response to my post.  I didn't see this as a horror story, or I should say it didn't meet my "standard" as it were.  But mostly because my standard is based on a crap-my-pants-look-around-every-corner-somethings-gonna-get-me mentality.

It could be i just didn't relate to the characters, couldn't feel empathy for them, and so I couldn't put myself in that mental place that I like good horror to take me to.  I couldn't see myself as a ghostly drain snake, nor as a haunted ex.

From wikipedia:

"Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of a supernatural element into everyday human experience. Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called "horror". Horror fiction often overlaps science fiction or fantasy, all three of which categories are sometimes placed under the umbrella classification speculative fiction."

You could argue this story fits the definition above - but for me, it didn't scare, didn't unsettle, and didn't horrify.

I think maybe I should have wrote "this did not meet my standard of a good horror story"




zZzacha

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Reply #11 on: August 22, 2008, 12:29:40 PM
I am surprised by the negative reactions, because I really enjoyed this story.
I was flabbergasted by the revelation where the man was, because both he and the listener didn't know anything and it clicked home when that was revealed. I loved the vagueness of that, wondering where he was and why.

The second part of the story was such a nice and also sad love story. The agony of being a ghost and being trampled on by the one you love. Aw, the pain!
Yeah, I really enjoyed this story. The pacing was quite right for me, I could keep my attention to the story (that does not happen a lot) and I even had to grin from time to time. This makes three great PP stories in a row. You guys are spoiling my ears! Thanks :]

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cuddlebug

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Reply #12 on: August 22, 2008, 10:06:48 PM
I am surprised by the negative reactions, because I really enjoyed this story.
I was flabbergasted by the revelation where the man was, because both he and the listener didn't know anything and it clicked home when that was revealed. I loved the vagueness of that, wondering where he was and why.
The second part of the story was such a nice and also sad love story. The agony of being a ghost and being trampled on by the one you love. Aw, the pain!
Yeah, I really enjoyed this story. The pacing was quite right for me, I could keep my attention to the story (that does not happen a lot) and I even had to grin from time to time. This makes three great PP stories in a row. You guys are spoiling my ears! Thanks :]

I'm with you there Z, I thought this story was really good and incredibly chilling in fact. I liked the vagueness of the background and the fact that the listener has to fill in a lot of information. Some stories can do that others can't without leaving the listener unsatisfied, this story actually benefitted from the lack of info on the Geist's life before 'life as a Geist' as it were, as the images we conjur up in our mind can sometimes be so much more terrifying, or visual, or sentimental, romantic, etc. than any words can.

It also had an incredibly depressing suicidal feel to it, which seemed a bit whiny at times but always fitting in characterization. The relationship was another aspect of the story that worked very well. There is not much I can imagine to be more horrifying than being alive after death and not being able to communicate with the one you love, to watch them suffer, and be 'trampled on' yourself without being there for them is pretty terrible, I think, and the sad part is, we don't even have to be dead to experience that feeling.

And for my part especially the claustrophobic sensation, the cold damp environment, or rather the description of it and how I experienced it through the Geist's eyes, ears and skin was pretty horrific. So well done, good choice for PP, IMO.



deflective

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Reply #13 on: August 23, 2008, 12:46:58 AM
finally, people questioning if this is horror?
Was there more to that, or did I miss the actual question?  :)
i think that was in response to my post.  I didn't see this as a horror story, or I should say it didn't meet my "standard" as it were.

yeah, i was going to comment on it then ran out of energy. genre is genre.



JoeFitz

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Reply #14 on: September 01, 2008, 01:04:54 AM
I really enjoyed many scenes of this piece - and especially the breaking of the "after life is fun" trope. The story, however, was pretty skant. Perhaps necessarily so in keeping with the unsubstantial nature of the narrator, but it lost me. Who was this guy? Why did she care so much about him? Why did he care so much about her yet commit suicide? Who was this terrible "psycho-"analyst?




Listener

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Reply #15 on: September 19, 2008, 01:03:47 PM
I saw this (http://www.worldwidefred.com/help.htm) and couldn't help but think of this story.

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Millenium_King

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Reply #16 on: July 13, 2010, 10:08:42 PM
I did not much care for this one.  I didn't hate it, but it certainly fell on the "dislike" side of the scale.  I continually drifted off in the beginning.  The sort of "character wakes up in formless void-schtick" is very amateur and overdone to my ears.  It might work in film, but starting a story off where the chracter AND setting AND plot are indistinct means that I cannot hold my interest.  Once all three of those things began to materialize, I began to pay more attention;  ergo, it is my opinion that there would have been nothing wrong with directly stating the beginning (ie. "I woke up, crammed into my bathtub drain-pipe" or something like that).

I was a little concerned for Blair, hoping she did not kill herself - but that was born out of the structure of the story, not her characterization (which was non-existent).

The plot was okay, but none of it surprised me.  It's actually a pretty tired and overused concept (the ghost who won't let the living let go and move on - "The 6th Sense" , "What Dreams may Come" , "Stay" , "The Lovely Bones" etc. etc.).

The language felt clumsy (overuse of metaphor, one right after the other) and none of it is memorable.

Just barely worth the listen, but certainly not worth a replay.

Great narration, though - I didn't have a problem with it.

Great intro/outro by Al again.

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Unblinking

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Reply #17 on: July 14, 2010, 01:23:10 PM
Apparently I missed this one in my original threadomancy spree.

This was one of my favorite Pseudopod episodes.  I like bizarre stories that give new takes on the afterlife or the nature of God and this one did that for me.  Sure, it used a lot of ghost standard plot elements, but the nature of his existence, waking up in the drain, moving around like a snakeskin, unable to touch anyone, that was super creepy and effective for me.



Millenium_King

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Reply #18 on: July 14, 2010, 05:46:46 PM
In retrospect, it was a good concept - but to be honest, I think much of the originality was robbed from it for me because I'd already listened to "The Mother and the Worm" and "The Garden and the Mirror."  Both investigated a similar concept of "monstrous reincarnation" and, I thought, handled the idea much better.

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