The Witch Is Dead: Notes and Sources
Notes and Sources
1. Oh My Darling Clementine and Black Betty are old songs. Clementine is a miner’s daughter who drowned. Black Betty is a whip, a prison car, a gun or a woman, according to different versions - hence her tendency to change shapes.
2. One thing I love about SPN is that it’s grounded in real locations and existing myths. It therefore pains me that the town in Pennsylvania had to be fictional. There was this whole pesky business of every roller coaster having real history that didn’t involve any monster-growing or mysterious demolition.
3. I have no clue if a person would be able to walk, even in a cast and medicated, shortly after losing a toe. Seems plausible, but I really don’t know.
4. Many, many thanks are owed to the ladies and gentlemen who kindly donated their bodies to science, and especially to cadaver nine, without whom this story would’ve been based on Hollywood ideas of anatomy.
5. Additional thanks to the Pathology Museum of the Vladivostok State Medical University and to the Kunstkamera museum of St. Petersburg, Russia. Without them, the Westmoreland twins also would’ve been based on Hollywood ideas of conjoined twins. I'm sure I still messed it up.
6. Sam was trying to recall Rudyard Kipling’s “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”, a short story from The Jungle Book. It’s about a mongoose that gets taken in as a pet by a family in India and protects them against two cobras living in the garden and plotting to kill the people. Chuchundra was the muskrat that crept along the walls all night, trying to build up courage to run into the center of the room but too scared of what might be out there, in the big dark space.
Master Post
1. Oh My Darling Clementine and Black Betty are old songs. Clementine is a miner’s daughter who drowned. Black Betty is a whip, a prison car, a gun or a woman, according to different versions - hence her tendency to change shapes.
2. One thing I love about SPN is that it’s grounded in real locations and existing myths. It therefore pains me that the town in Pennsylvania had to be fictional. There was this whole pesky business of every roller coaster having real history that didn’t involve any monster-growing or mysterious demolition.
3. I have no clue if a person would be able to walk, even in a cast and medicated, shortly after losing a toe. Seems plausible, but I really don’t know.
4. Many, many thanks are owed to the ladies and gentlemen who kindly donated their bodies to science, and especially to cadaver nine, without whom this story would’ve been based on Hollywood ideas of anatomy.
5. Additional thanks to the Pathology Museum of the Vladivostok State Medical University and to the Kunstkamera museum of St. Petersburg, Russia. Without them, the Westmoreland twins also would’ve been based on Hollywood ideas of conjoined twins. I'm sure I still messed it up.
6. Sam was trying to recall Rudyard Kipling’s “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”, a short story from The Jungle Book. It’s about a mongoose that gets taken in as a pet by a family in India and protects them against two cobras living in the garden and plotting to kill the people. Chuchundra was the muskrat that crept along the walls all night, trying to build up courage to run into the center of the room but too scared of what might be out there, in the big dark space.
Master Post