[AUDIO PLAYBACK -Clip from "The Cabin in the Woods"] - We have a winner. It's the Buckners, ladies and gentlemen. The Buckners pulled the W. All right. That means that congratulations go to Maintenance! [CHEERS] Who share the pot with Ronald, the intern. - Yeah, whoa! - That's not fair. I had zombies, too. - Yes, you did. Yes, you had zombies. But this is zombie redneck torture family. See, they're entirely separate species, like the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal. [END PLAYBACK] [THEME MUSIC] CHARLIE BENNETT: You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks-- The Research Library Rock'n'Roll Radio Show. It's very much like a radio show, but it's a completely different species. Like, difference between an elephant and-- I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio. I'm going to cut that part out the podcast. ALEX MCGEE: The physical studio. CHARLIE BENNETT: The physical studio, with everybody. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. I'm just distracted. There's so much stuff going on. There's candy everywhere. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it. ALEX MCGEE: Today's episode is called "Bad Moon Rising-- Sci-Fi, Horror, and the Occult" in Georgia Tech's Special Collections. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, I'm so glad the show's theme is also Halloween. I was worried we wouldn't celebrate it. ALEX MCGEE: Of course, we're celebrating Halloween. Why did you think we wouldn't? CHARLIE BENNETT: Well, nobody else dressed up. FRED RASCOE: Yeah, I wasn't sure if you were in costume or if this was like a school spirit situation. ALEX MCGEE: It's both. Charlie is dressed as vintage Buzz and their converse sneakers, forever my favorite Buzz era. CHARLIE BENNETT: Thank you for acknowledging the costume and the special day. MARLEE GIVENS: Happy Halloween, everybody. Our topic today is a spooky, scary-- oh, it's spooky scary skeletons, vampires, and werewolves. Alien creatures from the sea or from the sky, that is, it's all about books that might have that stuff in them. FRED RASCOE: Our guest today is in charge of the Georgia Tech Archives Special Collections. I'm going to have to see if you got that Buzz costume from archives, Charlie, or that was like a homemade-- ALEX MCGEE: I need to go check our buzz sneakers, and make sure they're still there. CHARLIE BENNETT: You shouldn't check until maybe later today. OK, our guest is in charge of Georgia Tech Archives Special Collections' purchasing and is deeply passionate about horror in particular. So it's no surprise that they have left their mark on our rare books collection here at Georgia Tech. MARLEE GIVENS: We're going to get into some of the unique purchases they've made in recent years, but with a spooky focus, talking about our science fiction, horror, and occult purchases in honor of October 31. ALEX MCGEE: Truly, I am so excited for this show. With that being said, our songs today are about what else? Spooky vibes, science fiction, witchiness magic, and horrifying discoveries. All together, that's Halloween. So let's just lock in. This is Halloween by Siouxsie & the Banshees right here on Lost in the Stacks. [SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES, "HALLOWEEN"] CHARLIE BENNETT: That's Halloween by Siouxsie & the Banshees. Our show today is called "Bad Moon Rising-- Sci-Fi, Horror, and the Occult in Georgia Tech's Special Collections." Think of it as Special Collections with a Halloween flair. ALEX MCGEE: [GIGGLES] Today, we're talking to past and future guest Alison Reynolds, the Research Services and Instruction archivist and Special Collections curator with the Georgia Tech Archives. Alison leads curation efforts for the Special Collections in the Archives, focusing on science fiction, a strength unique to Georgia Tech. Welcome back to the show, Alison. ALISON REYNOLDS: Hey, thank you. Great to be here, especially on Halloween. ALEX MCGEE: Yes. So I want to start with talking about special collections, the background of it, and then why is science fiction a big deal for us at Georgia Tech? ALISON REYNOLDS: Georgia Tech was actually one of the first schools to offer science fiction class at a college level. So sorry, in 1971, there was a professor named Bud Foote who taught here for at least 30 years before he retired. And when he retired, he donated his books, magazines, papers to the library. And that formed the basis for our current science fiction collection. And it's been growing ever since, and to the point where now there's a science fiction studies minor in several faculty here who just teach and research and science fiction. CHARLIE BENNETT: And if you dig into the podcast feed, you can find the Lost in the Stacks episode, "50 Years of Science Fiction at Georgia Tech," which starts with a Bud Foote quote. ALEX MCGEE: Oh, does it really? CHARLIE BENNETT: Bud Foote taught me. I took one class with him. ALEX MCGEE: OK. CHARLIE BENNETT: I am old, yes. ALEX MCGEE: OK. [LAUGHTER] Well, not 1971 old? CHARLIE BENNETT: No, no. He was very near the end-- let's get back to Alison and science fiction. ALEX MCGEE: Get away from how old Charlie is. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yep. [LAUGHTER] ALEX MCGEE: So yeah, I guess, how have you focused on developing the collection while you've been here? ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah, I mean, fortunately, since I've been here, we've been able to not just rely on donations, but actually be able to purchase some things to build the collection. A lot of the collection development, and my philosophy is to have it be very user-focused. So paying attention to what faculty are researching, especially here, what students are interested in. So if they're using things in Archives, in the reading room, or if they're doing classes, what they gravitate towards, what they get excited about, what they talk about. And also just paying attention to larger trends in the genre. We do a lot of science fiction programming as well, sometimes with our Public Programming team, bringing in authors, paying attention to who's winning awards, the Hugo Awards, Nebula Awards, what are the major trends in the genre that we think we need to be collecting. CHARLIE BENNETT: And there's another collection, a science fiction collection. I think it's the circulating one in the Sci-Fi Lounge. Is that yours also? ALISON REYNOLDS: No, I only deal with Special Collections. So it's the things that you can't check out and take home with you. So things that are a little bit more unique and rare. Early first edition books or very early sci-fi authors, papers, manuscripts, fanzines, convention materials, kind of all the things that are not necessarily so mass produced, or they might be more fragile. And so they just need a little extra care. CHARLIE BENNETT: Do you have a wish list somewhere? ALISON REYNOLDS: I definitely have a wish list. I have a very long spreadsheet. I keep year round of things I would like to spend to add to the collection. A lot of it for this, I am not focusing on books or a lot of mass-produced materials. I really want things that are a little bit more unique, and I'm kind of gravitating towards things that are more visual, because when we have class visits, students aren't reading books and things in the archives. When we use magazines, a lot of it is visual analysis of covers. So I've recently been getting a little bit more into comics or movie or promotional photographs materials, some film scripts, partially because of Atlanta being big in film, but also with the Y. Frank Freeman collection and early Hollywood we have. There's some connection there. So really, things more visual, things a little bit more tactile, and not just text. CHARLIE BENNETT: Alex, did you know what you were getting into when you came to tech and joined Archives or Science Fiction? ALEX MCGEE: I mean, I knew there was a science fiction collection, but hearing about the direction that Alison takes it is obviously exciting. I love hearing about the film stuff, because I think that that is a really fascinating direction, and certainly, it's a different entry point into culture. I know we also have Star Wars, we have Star Trek fan material. So like the fan culture part of it too is really interesting. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah, fan culture. And I say film, we're not collecting movies in film, things like that. I'm thinking more scripts. We've gotten several scripts. I've seen a few posters for sale that I'm kind of interested in terms of exhibits or putting them up somewhere, like in the reading room display for a while. CHARLIE BENNETT: How do faculty influence your collection? Like you said, you want to get stuff that the students respond to, users. But folks who are teaching science fiction, how do they influence your collection? ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah, I try to talk to some of our faculty. I know the Brittain Fellows teaching the English courses too, a lot of them are interested in sci-fi. So I always ask them when I meet people, What is your research area? I think through programming, I'm sure Dr. Lisa Yaszek has probably been on this show. She works with us quite a bit. CHARLIE BENNETT: A few times, yeah. ALISON REYNOLDS: So yeah, I chat with her, learn about what she's researching and publishing and what kinds of connections we can make there. CHARLIE BENNETT: Have you ended up with something that you kind of knew, I need to add this to the collection, but you were not in particular enthused by? [LAUGHTER] ALISON REYNOLDS: Honestly, no, I don't get a lot that I don't think I'm enthused by. Yeah, I can't think of an example. I feel like I look-- I get emails pretty much every day from people selling this stuff, so I can glance and probably know within a minute or less, like, Is this going to be good for the collection or not? So it's sort of like my idea of what I think we need and also a gut feeling, and also just a lot of other factors, I think. But yeah, it seems like it's much faster now than it used to be. CHARLIE BENNETT: Do you get cold-call emails from people who want you to buy their stuff? ALISON REYNOLDS: Oh, absolutely. And phone calls, yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: I'm so glad I don't have that part of your job. MARLEE GIVENS: This is Lost in the Stacks. And we'll be back with more horror after a music set. ALEX MCGEE: File this set under F37 dot N557 no dot C43. [CONCRETE BLONDE, "BLOODLETTING (THE VAMPIRE SONG)"] [CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL, "BAD MOON RISING"] ALEX MCGEE: That was Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival, CCR, if you will. And before that, Bloodletting-- The Vampire Song by Concrete Blonde, songs about paying attention to your surroundings and scary stuff. [THEME MUSIC] MARLEE GIVENS: This is Lost in the Stacks, and today's show is called "Bad Moon Rising-- Sci-Fi, Horror, and the Occult in Georgia Tech Special Collections." We're speaking with Research Services and Instruction Archivist Alison Reynolds, who leads collection development for the Georgia Tech Archives Special Collections. We talked a lot about sci-fi earlier. So let's talk about the horror and occult and the scary stuff that you have in your Special Collections. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah, so these are all recent acquisitions, probably over the last four years. I think one of the first and most interesting procedures is the first American edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. So that is printed in 1833 but actually uses the 1818 text. And people get really excited and interested when they hear the name. I've used that quite a bit with classes, but it's very unassuming looking. It's two volumes covered in cloth, uncut pages. It just looks kind of old, and I love that about it. Pasted-on labels, it's very authentic to that early 19th century printing. And also the fun fact, they misspelled Shelley's last name. They leave out the second E and just didn't fix it. We've also got some Dracula. That one, maybe a little more horror than sci-fi, but I'm a huge Dracula, Stoker fan. So we got a first American edition of that as well from 1899. It's got a really interesting image of a castle with a gold sun embossed on it. So I know some students in one class in particular have used that for an assignment. Again, going off the Dracula thing, because I know a faculty member here who studies vampires, I got a 1996 limited edition illustrated copy by Edward Gorey. I love Edward Gorey. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yes. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah. And it has an autographed copy of lithograph Lucy Westenra in that very 1920s art deco kind of style. And then more recently, some Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I think there's some overlaps with sci-fi horror there. And The Body Snatcher, which a class that was looking into biomedical ethical questions in history and literature and art was really interested in that, and also overlaps with a screenplay by Val Lewton from the movie The Body Snatcher. It came out in 1945 with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi actually are our Frankenstein and Dracula. So I love that stuff. I studied English in undergraduate in grad school. My undergraduate thesis was Victorian ghost stories, so I'm actually maybe a little biased and excited to have the opportunity to overlap this. I feel like as long as I can justify the things we're getting are going to be used for teaching or scholarship in some way, you kind of leave a stamp on it. FRED RASCOE: So I get the collector aspect of a first edition of a book, and I get that historical, you're holding something that someone that was alive in the 1800s held and read. What do students do with it when they come to the archives now? What is a scholarly value for someone looking at a first edition? ALISON REYNOLDS: I think there's definitely that awe factor. Feels like there's a little bit of intrinsic value in it. It's memorable for a lot of students too. I've met people that graduated and then actually were one of the classes and saw some of these books and were like, oh yeah, that was my favorite part of being at Georgia Tech was seeing some of the cool old books. And you can learn a little bit about how a book-- if you're interested in book publishing, book scholarship, spreading of knowledge, seeing how these things were printed, how they were distributed, think who owns these things, how they were used, all of those things can be used. FRED RASCOE: Besides the misspelling of Mary Shelley's name, does anything change from the first edition to later editions? ALISON REYNOLDS: Not in the printing, but you mean the different versions, 1818 and 1831? FRED RASCOE: I guess maybe there's different-- they added things or-- I don't know if there were any edits made. ALISON REYNOLDS: I know in the 1831 text, it was a little more judgmental of Dr. Frankenstein. I think she read some of the critics of the time. She took some of their advice, and so it made it kind of a moral question, a more-- yeah, we're supposed to place a little bit more judgment on Dr. Frankenstein for what he's done, maybe, than in the original text. ALEX MCGEE: So you were talking about the bio-- I'm sorry, biomedical, ethical kind of class. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah. ALEX MCGEE: So with that one, that was Frankenstein? ALISON REYNOLDS: They read Frankenstein and talked about The Body Snatcher. ALEX MCGEE: OK. So did they have to do an assignment where they compared the text, or was it just like drawing conclusions in our modern times? I'm wishing you could unpack that more. ALISON REYNOLDS: No, they did that outside of their Archives visit. I think it was after they had read it. It was more just getting the chance to see a physical copy. And The Body Snatcher had some illustrations in it, too. So just seeing what that looks like. I can also talk about the horror comics I got. ALEX MCGEE: Oh, yeah. Definitely. ALISON REYNOLDS: Because I'm looking for an opportunity to use those. So the vault of horror was printed in 1950 to 1955. The same people who created Tales from the Crypt. That's maybe a little bit more familiar. But it was Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein. And they made this until 1955, when there was a whole Comics Code that these comics were coming under scrutiny for being too graphically violent and contributing to juvenile delinquency and crime. And so this comics group made a self-imposed code. If you're familiar with the Hays Code in film similar to that kind of self-censors what goes in these. And so that kind of forced it out of publication in the 1950s. So I got a 1982 reprint, the entire collection in five volumes, which I think, was the first time that it was ever reprinted after that. But still I feel like it's interesting time because those early Satanic Panic, and I don't know that anything. But he was more comfortable with graphic violence and horror at that time. But personally, I love it. I'm looking for an opportunity to use it with some students. CHARLIE BENNETT: It's kind of wild to think about that spike in graphicness or transgression that came before the '50s, and then everything got locked down. And then the '70s were trying to get back to the late '30s in terms of what they were free to do. You said, what was the name of that? The Vault-- ALISON REYNOLDS: It's Vault of Horror. CHARLIE BENNETT: And that's the early creep show. ALISON REYNOLDS: I think it influenced that. CHARLIE BENNETT: Tales from the Crypt. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah, so they had a vault keeper, a crypt keeper, and a witch. And they had three publications The Haunt of Fear, Vault of Horror, and Tales of the Crypt, all by pretty much the same people, but all ended around the same time because of this Comics Code. CHARLIE BENNETT: Are you kind of doing an autodidactic degree in horror, like the history of horror? Do you just dig through the stuff and find your interests in it? ALISON REYNOLDS: I think so, yeah. I mean, I'm a very curious person. I watch a lot of horror movies, and I read a lot of horror. I'm in two horror book clubs, everyone. So I read a lot of this. To be honest, I've only gone to one recently. But a lot of it's just personal interest. I get curious, and I want to know the backstory of the movie, the book, and what influenced it. And yeah, if I can overlap it with my job and get paid for it, it's even better. FRED RASCOE: You're listening to Lost in the Stacks, and we're going to hear more about those rare books and the occult on the left side of the hour. [THEME MUSIC] [AUDIO PLAYBACK] [UPBEAT MUSIC] [AUDIO PLAYBACK] - Hi, this is Mandy Chef, the loudmouth librarian, and you're listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta. [UPBEAT MUSIC] - Someone said love. [END PLAYBACK] ALEX MCGEE: Today's show is called "Bad Moon Rising-- Sci-Fi, Horror, and the Occult at Georgia Tech Special Collections." And we are talking about science fiction, horror, and you guessed it, the occult and Georgia Tech Archives Special Collections. There may be some people wondering, What is the value of investing in these publications? How we justify these purchases at an academic library? In short, researching old literary, science fiction, horror, and the occult is valuable because it reveals the origins of modern imaginative storytelling. We can see the cultural fears, scientific ideas, and social issues of the past. And these works illustrate how authors use speculative themes to explore humanity's relationship with technology, progress, and the unknown. Studying them also helps us trace the evolution of genre conventions, uncover forgotten voices, and understand how early writers shaped the ideas and archetypes that continue to influence literature, film, and culture today. Plus, it's a fun way to engage with these concepts in a less formal manner. And as always, trick people into visiting the Archives and Special Collections in a library. Sounds pretty good to me. MARLEE GIVENS: Me too. [LAUGHTER] File this under PN1995 point 9 dot D6345S46. [BUCK OWENS, "IT'S A MONSTER'S HOLIDAY"] SPEAKER: Gotcha. MARLEE GIVENS: It's a Monster's Holiday by the late, great Buck Owens. And before that, Science Fiction Double Feature by Richard O'Brien, songs about the variety of sci-fi and horror stories we tell. [THEME MUSIC] ALEX MCGEE: This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's episode is "Bad Moon Rising-- Sci-Fi, Horror, and the Occult and Georgia Tech Special Collections." We're speaking with Alison Reynolds, Research Services and Instruction archivist who oversees collections development-- collection development, there we go, for the Georgia Tech Archives Special Collections. So we've been teasing it, but I want to end our discussion today about the books we have that I guess I would call horror adjacent. So occult topics in particular. And Alison, can you tell us what does that include, and what is the connection for this to be at a STEM institution like Tech? ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah, great question. So I think these I would consider part of our rare books collection because most of them are coming from early modern period. We don't have a huge collection right now, but it's something been growing based on faculty and research interest. We do have one on witchcraft called the Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft by John Webster from 1677. But it's not really a manual on witchcraft. It's a book where he's trying to say that witches exist, but that they don't get their power from demons or devil. They're getting it from magic in nature. So nature magic, things like incantations or really just the power of suggestion. So he's taking what we might think of as psychological approach, and he's kind of going against the traditional ways of accusing witches and putting them on trial. And he actually got an in premature by the Royal Society of London, which like their stamp of approval and say like, yes, this is a scientific text. CHARLIE BENNETT: Could you say the title again? ALISON REYNOLDS: Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft. CHARLIE BENNETT: And what year was that? ALISON REYNOLDS: 1677. CHARLIE BENNETT: So that sounds like a David Foster Wallace novel or something. That title, I'm amazed. OK. I had to make sure. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah. A few others are Conjurors' Magazine. That one's a little later. It's 1791 to 1793. Another book that is French, I looked up the translated title. It is The Curious Perspective, or the Artificial Magic of Marvelous Effects. And that one is taking geometry and talking about how you can take lenses and mirrors and use them to create visual effects that might look like magic, people dancing in a cone of light, or a reflection mirror that looks blurry. And then you move and look at a different angle and it looks like it should. Physiognomy is another one. And when we talk about why we have these things, that's an example of what we now think of as a pseudoscience, but that they really thought was a science at the time. So what that is really just looking at a person's facial features and characteristics and using that to make judgment about their personality or moral characteristics. And for hundreds of years, people thought this is an actual science. So we're looking at things that were science once or maybe influenced later science. For example, a horror of that is that it kind of influenced eugenics, which is another pseudoscience a little bit later. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, you find the bumps on someone's head and then execute them for being a deviant. ALISON REYNOLDS: Oh, yeah. Yeah, phrenology too. Yeah. Um. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, sorry, I knocked you off your train of thought. ALISON REYNOLDS: That's OK. CHARLIE BENNETT: I do want to say, I'm amazed at how much modern, kind of cynical irony or whimsical irony those titles sound like. But they were dead serious. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yes. CHARLIE BENNETT: Observation of supposed witchcraft. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah, all of these have such long titles. They go on and on and on, just dot, dot dot. That's how I record them all. So I was going to mention is things like alchemy. So The Conjurors' Magazine has a lot of astrology, palm reading, alchemy, even stuff like true crime. All of these things were related to hard science in the way a lot of these people doing science. Maybe the Royal Society didn't officially support magical beliefs, but a lot of them were thought alchemy. On the side, they were studying alchemy or natural magic. So there was a little bit of-- I would argue there's a little bit of a mixture of those two things during this time, maybe pre-1800. FRED RASCOE: Newton, Isaac Newton, was an alchemist toward the end of his life, wasn't he? He was pretty obsessed with finding out how to create gold out of things that were not gold. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah. I would look into that some more, but I've heard that before that he was into in alchemy. And a lot of those people like were doing alchemy and astrology. CHARLIE BENNETT: When you read this stuff. Do you find yourself being kind of like hypnotized into believing it a little bit like the way they talk about it? Or does it make it like even more explicit, like, oh, this is all crazy? ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah, I don't really believe that stuff. And it doesn't convince me. I just think of it more as an entertaining perspective of like, oh, this is what people actually thought. FRED RASCOE: Charlie, she just told you it's all about the power of suggestion. [LAUGHTER] CHARLIE BENNETT: Tell us about the class that gets-- the people who do the work on this, was there a class that connected to it or a professor? ALISON REYNOLDS: I did. I just I worked with this class yesterday. It was their third time visiting. So some of these materials I purchased-- ALEX MCGEE: Third time this semester? ALISON REYNOLDS: Third time, no, overall, three different semesters. Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: Alex about to write a letter. ALEX MCGEE: That's right. Yeah. ALISON REYNOLDS: No, it was her third time teaching the class, and she brought them every time. And they're studying Shakespeare in STEM, Renaissance in STEM. And so a lot of Shakespeare has ties to supernatural, too, with witches and ghosts. So we're looking at some of the scientific texts from a similar maybe somewhat later than Shakespeare time period. So they're pulling all these things together and thinking about how they can make connections between occult, physics, herbals, and create a little imagined exhibit. CHARLIE BENNETT: So we're almost out of time, but we have to ask, What's your favorite item in this collection today? ALISON REYNOLDS: Oh, in this-- ALEX MCGEE: All the areas, I would say. ALISON REYNOLDS: Of everything or what I talked about here or just-- ALEX MCGEE: I think everything. CHARLIE BENNETT: Anything that comes to mind. What's the thing that you like? I mean, let's get a little Halloween in there, what's-- ALEX MCGEE: Yeah, we're looking for that-- ALISON REYNOLDS: Oh, OK. ALEX MCGEE: --leaning. ALISON REYNOLDS: Because my favorite thing I was going to say is Agostino Ramelli's book on Theater of Machines, engineering. Just because the physical book is very pretty. It's decorated with some gilt, things that have been pressed into it. And lots of color, only in the way that it imagines some things. It's a little pseudoscience-y in some of the designs in that they're actually not physically possible, maybe some perpetual motion machines are things that they-- CHARLIE BENNETT: That's a good start towards the occult. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah, yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: But what's your favorite spooky, scary-- ALISON REYNOLDS: Oh, spooky, scary thing? CHARLIE BENNETT: --something, yeah. ALISON REYNOLDS: I really want to read more in The Conjurors' Magazine, because this is a periodical, and there's two volumes all bound together. And I've only kind of skimmed them. There's pages about palm reading, like yesterday in the class, some of the students were trying to read their palms and figure out how old they were going to be when they were going to get married. So I feel like there's a lot of great stories if I had time to just sit and read through it because it's in English, so it's a lot more accessible. ALEX MCGEE: How convenient. Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, you've got to come back and tell us about some weird thing that you find. ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show was "Bad Moon Rising-- Sci-Fi, Horror, and the Occult in Georgia Tech's Special Collections." Our guest today was Alison Reynolds, research services and instruction archivist at the Georgia Tech archives. Thanks so much for joining us again, Alison. It's always a pleasure. ALISON REYNOLDS: Thank you for having me. FRED RASCOE: File this set under PR5397 point F7. Dot F7! Dot F7! [UPBEAT MUSIC] CHARLIE BENNETT: Our show today is called "Bad Moon Rising-- Sci-Fi, Horror, and the Occult and Georgia Tech Special Collections." We've been discussing science fiction and horror in Special Collections with our guest, Alison Reynolds. I want to know, as we head out of our Halloween show, what scary, spooky, or freaky thing we all think should be added to the Special Collections here at Georgia Tech. The thing I want is everything Lovecraft related, and nothing from Lovecraft himself. I want all that Alan Moore stuff, all of the extended Arkham histories and all that, but let's leave the actual Lovecraft texts somewhere else. How about you, Marlee? MARLEE GIVENS: So I'm not a horror person. I'm just going to say the scariest thing to find in Special Collections is mold and move on. Cody? CODY TURNER: Can we get a fog machine in there? Can we make it spooky in the room? That's how I think. Like, when I go into an archives, it's like I'm going back in time. I could stand to be a little spooked when I go in there. ALEX MCGEE: I'm going to go ahead and say no. CODY TURNER: No? ALEX MCGEE: Yeah. FRED RASCOE: Yeah. Getting back to Marlee's comment about mold there, cross purposes. ALEX MCGEE: Yeah. FRED RASCOE: I think something about-- I'm going to get a little on the freaky rather than spooky side. ALEX MCGEE: Oh, yeah. FRED RASCOE: Cryptozoology. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah. FRED RASCOE: The Skunk Ape. The neglected large ape. We know about the Yeti. We know about Sasquatch. But the Southeast has its own-- the Skunk Ape. CHARLIE BENNETT: I retract my endorsement. FRED RASCOE: Let's get some material about the reality that is the Skunk Ape in the Southeast United States. Alex. ALEX MCGEE: Yeah. So Alison mentioned astrology. I actually have found myself on the astrology side of the internet as of late, and I find it kind of fascinating. There are a lot of predictions being made about the world and certain people, and some of them I wish are true. So I think it's really interesting that Galileo was actually really sought after for his horoscopes that he would do for the wealthy people in Italy. So that would be fun to me to see. Let's get some Galileo horoscopes. CHARLIE BENNETT: I like it. Alison, we've asked you a bunch already, but now that we're at the end, what's the thing that comes to mind? What would you like to add? ALISON REYNOLDS: Yeah, well, one answer, because I just got asked about it yesterday, but the Malleus Maleficarum, the Infamous witch-hunting manual. But that would sell for about six figures. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, so no numbers. ALISON REYNOLDS: OK. No numbers. It's very expensive. I won't tell you how much, but it's very expensive. CHARLIE BENNETT: How old is the original witch? ALISON REYNOLDS: From 1486. But my short answer is alchemy. I really like to get some things about alchemy which is more realistic. CHARLIE BENNETT: Alison just wants more gold. [LAUGHTER] OK, roll the credits. [MUSIC PLAYING] ALEX MCGEE: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Alex McGee, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens. CHARLIE BENNETT: Legal counsel and a self-published treatise on palm reading were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. MARLEE GIVENS: Special thanks to Alison for being on the show, to all the Archives and Special Collections folks at the Georgia Tech Library. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening. FRED RASCOE: Our web page is library.gatech.edu/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us. MARLEE GIVENS: Next week, it's the first Friday of the month, so we're visiting another site in the GT Library Guidebook. FRED RASCOE: It's time for our last song today. We talked about Halloween, science fiction, horror, the occult. So let's finish the show with a song from an album that pulls together all those themes, both in the songs and in the studio, from the legendary record The Evil One. This is Night of the Vampire by Roky Erickson and the Aliens. Have a great weekend, everyone, and be safe out there among the zombies, vampires, demons, ghosts, aliens, and the Creature with the Atom Brain. Happy Halloween. [MUSIC PLAYING] [ROKY ERICKSON AND THE ALIENS, "NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRE"]