We got Cabin Fever!!!

Amy and Rachel, two millennials, share their love for all things creepy and spooky. They discuss cabin fever and share a recipe for an old-fashioned cocktail. They define cabin fever as the restlessness and irritability experienced when stuck in isolation for a long time. They discuss the symptoms and ways to beat cabin fever, such as sticking to a schedule, getting outside, connecting with loved ones, and being creative. They also recommend limiting news consumption and finding healthy ways to deal with emotions. Hi there! I'm Amy. And I'm Rachel. And we're just two millenials who share a passion for the creepy and the spooky, harbor a true love for true pride, and share our favorite spirits. So sit back, have a cocktail with two creepy ghouls. That was beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. It's funny, every time we do this, you would think, um, this is what, our seventh episode? Yeah. I would have it, like, down to earth science. I think you do. Oh no. I still have to have a script on hand. On my handy dandy notebook. Alright. What's our topic? Our topic is... What is cabin fever? Oh no, wait. Sorry. That's stupid. That's, like, my first blurb. It is... We got cabin fever! There you go. We got a reference, um, the good old Muppet Treasure Island. As one does. It's so good. So good. Um, and what's the drink to go with it? So the drink that I, um, have is... What do you have when, what do you drink when you have cabin fever? I mean, typically everything, but... Is that the kitchen sink? Yeah. In my experience. But, uh, we're gonna go with an old-fashioned today. Mmm, that's good. Puts you right to sleep. Oh my gosh. Forgetting about when you have cabin fever. It's just something cozy and has everything you need. So what the ingredients are, and then I'm gonna add in, like, what I like to do personally. Okay. Since making old-fashions around Christmas time is now our new holiday thing to do. Tradition. Yeah. So, you will have simple syrup. Mm-hmm. And you could always make your own with sugar and water. That's all simple syrup is, FYI. Okay. And you will, and then you can use a teaspoon of water. Helps bring out the flavor of the bourbon. So mix that in with your bourbon. Typically, um, one teaspoon of sugar. I have two, if you want to do it like making your own. Three dashes of Angostura bitters. One teaspoon of water. Two ounces of bourbon. And garnish with an orange twist. That's one ingredients list. Mm-hmm. But I think when you add the water, it brings out the flavor of the bourbon. Yeah. So, don't make it hard on yourself. Just buy simple syrup. Bitters, and it's funny because, um, I believe it's Woodford Reserve. They make all kinds of flavored bitters. Yeah. So, you can really get fun with it. So, if you... I do orange bitters. Yeah. For old-fashioned. Typically, an orange is good. I've also tried spiced cherry. Ooh. That's nice. So, but typically, you want to go with an orange bitters. And then you put in some ice. The ice is the key in this. And, of course, your bourbon, which is like two ounces or 1.5. Or more. Or more because you got cabin fever. And you garnish typically with a maraschino cherry and an orange slice. And what I like to do because typically I love cherries. And I know... Yeah. You're very opposite. You're very much like I prefer mine to be more focused on the orange. Yes. Absolutely. So, what I like to do is I buy the bourbon soaked cherries. And I believe that there's a lot of brands out there. There are. There's... The Woodford Reserve is just the one that I know of. But I know that there are different ones. So, I will get the bourbon soaked cherries. I'll put usually... I love cherries. So, I'll usually put like three or four in there. Oh, nice. And with my orange peel. And it's fun if you take the orange peel and rub it around the rim of the glass. It brings out the more flavor, notes, and such. Okay. Like you can't see. And I also love to pour in a little bit of the cherry juice from the bourbon soaked cherries. Okay. So, you mix that in with all your traditional ingredients. And you just have a very fruity, very bourbon style... Smooth. Smooth drink which will make you sleep like a baby if you're having a panic attack. You're just staring wide-eyed out the window wondering where your life has gone wrong. Exactly. So, there. Yeah. Sounds delicious and amazing. Yeah. And it's... I mean... I love a good old-fashioned. When I think of old-fashioned, I love drinking them more in like the fall and winter. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. But, again... It warms you up. It does. It warms the cockles of your heart. Yeah. So, that is what I recommend for our drink of the week. And I feel like that really will go into play with our theme here. Yes. Which, as we've discussed, it is cabin fever. Mm-hmm. And what is cabin fever, you may be asking yourself? It is the distressing, claustrophobic, irritability, or restlessness experienced when a person or group of people is stuck at an isolated location or confined quarters for an extended time frame. A person may be referenced as stir-crazy, quotation marks, which is derived from the use of stir, meaning prison. Oh. I didn't know that. I... Yeah. That's... That's brand-new information to me. That's what I found out. And, I mean, I think we all have experiences. We're going to do, I think, more of a deep dive with COVID. Mm-hmm. That brought out a lot of stir-crazy for a lot of us. Yeah. And cabin fever. Just being stuck at home, not being able to go out, see your friends and family, maybe like you used to. Yeah. Just... I know it was a dark time for me. Whenever it was dark. I mean, you can... But facing the pandemic and... Yeah. Everything was closing down and you couldn't really go out. Nowhere to go or nothing to do. You can only watch so many documentaries on serial killers. Yeah. Until you start to feel the balls pulling in. And we're going to do a discussion with some movies and some of their themes, but I also want to talk about the symptoms. Yeah. And I also have a little bit on what you can do to cure the fever of the cabin. Oh. If you will. I would love that. So the symptoms typically, now that our cabin fever is defined, medically termed defined condition that is known as folk syndrome with a combo of these symptoms. Anxiety, lastitude, which is just a state of physical or mental weariness, no energy, moodiness, irritable, boredom, depression, feelings of being dissatisfied due to confinement, bad weather, which that's just weird, routine, isolation, lack of stimulation, a person may experience sleepiness or sleeplessness, have a distrust of anyone they are with or have an urge to go outside even in adverse conditions. So think of a blizzard outside and then you're like, I need to get out and you go out into a blizzard. So that's just an example I have. So honestly, these also sound like symptoms I've had on my period. True. Am I wrong? Wrong internal cabin fever. Yes. Am I wrong? Oh, no, you're not wrong. It's cabin fever of my uterus. So that, I mean, personally, I was just like, checks, checks, checks, and yep, yep, got that. Yep. Chocolate and bourbon usually is the solution for me. But COVID cabin fever was a thing that I looked at. And so these are 12 ways to beat the fever. Yep. Try to stay on a regular schedule, which is hard if you're like used to going to an office every day and you're working from home. So that's an example of just trying to create a regular schedule for yourself and stay on it. Yep. Get outside if you can, even if it's just like walking out your door. If you have a balcony, if you're in an apartment, just sit outside for a spell and have your coffee or just go for like a walk around the neighborhood. Take care of your health. I know that my health, I was eating and drinking a lot. Most people were. I may or may not have gained some pounds. I will leave that to your imagination. Connect with friends and family. Yes. Even like the Zoom calls or whatever that was. Yes, Zoom calls, FaceTime, texting, having a phone call. Anything, yeah. Just staying in touch with your friends and family is very good for your health. If you live with others, find time for yourself. If you are at home with, you have a family and you have kids running around a husband, then you're going to get sick of just... You're going to need time with people. You love them, but it's like, okay, I need an hour to myself where I can just go in a room, maybe watch a television show that I love or read a book or just watch TikTok videos in the corner with tea, coffee, or something stronger. Just having that moment to yourself. Do some deep breathing while you take a bath or a shower. Breathing exercises can help with anxiety and stress. Okay. I remember whenever I was seeing a counselor, that helped. It's kind of if you're just feeling really anxious, it's a way to cool you down, calm you down, and just make you feel more collected. Be creative. Get into something creative. Think of a hobby like most people have been. Yeah. Paint knitting. Painting by numbers. Or knitting. Like you said, there's so many outlets out there to be creative. Try creative writing. Write a poem. Look at the positive side. If you're just sitting there being all doom and gloom... It's going to feel like doom and gloom. Yeah, it is. Try to look at it in the glass half full kind of method here. I know that's talked a lot about in manifesting, which yes, I believe in. Oh, yeah. To me, it's like a magnet. If you're just attracting and thinking negative thoughts, that's what's going to come to you. Yeah. So just trying to have a little lighter note to things, be more positive, open-minded in a good way, then things will work out and be better. Limit the news that you watch or read. I know... Oh, yeah. A lot, a lot of people are watching a lot of news. I think my parents had CNN on 24-7. News is usually 910 bad news, not good news. So it's a little downer, if you will. It's great to watch the news and be informed, but you don't want to watch too much of it. Yeah. So if you're watching it three hours a day, why don't you limit it to 30 minutes to an hour? Yeah. Cut it back. Cut it. Just cut it back. As those who worked in news. Oh, yeah. It's just like, okay, I am becoming super desensitized. Yeah, very much so. I need to just separate myself from this. Yeah. Find healthy ways of dealing with emotion, journaling, and doing a hobby, meditating. So journaling can be really helpful, and it's not like you have to do the, dear diary, I'm angry today. If you want to, hey, it's your choice. But I also have this 90-day journal where you can write down five things that you're about. It lists three good things that happened in the past 24 hours. It lists five things that, if they have already happened, that you're trying to manifest. I like that. It's like a step-by-step journal, so it's not like you have to write paragraphs and paragraphs. Yeah. Little tidbits. Little tidbits that kind of just make you feel more whole and like you're accomplishing more. I like it. So that kind of thing. If you are feeling anger toward yourself or anybody else, remember to stop before you act. So say your girlfriend, boyfriend did something, before you go yelling at them and just stop, think about it. Reflect. Reflect before you act. And reaching out, lastly, to support groups. Therapy. There's a lot of therapy, like therapy online that you can do. Yeah, or through text or video or something like that. I feel like the therapy game has really expanded. It has. It's become more affordable and convenient mainly for anybody, especially if they have a busy schedule. They can do this with a therapist. They can be like, hey, do you have time for like a 10-minute Zoom call? So those are some ways where you can cope and feel better and not go cray-cray. All that stuff. Yeah. I like it. So tell me a story. All right. So I want to talk about the true story of The Lighthouse, which was made into a movie in 2016, I believe. And it's in black and white, which I think is supposed to give it a timey feel, because it does take place from a long time ago. Yeah, I've seen it. With Robert Pattinson, right? Yes, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. Oh, okay. The main actors. The main actors, yeah. So I'll set the scene for you. Sit back, everybody. Get a little action. It's like something from a horror film. One that depicts a dark and lonely existence for one man with nothing for company but the corpse of a colleague. Dun-dun-dun-dun. All right. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, he was alone. Almost. All right. So here's the weird thing. As ships would continue to sail past the lighthouse, unaware of the nightmare, according to legend, those navigating their ships could see his arm waving or blowing, as it turned out, in the wind. They didn't know he was dead. Dun-dun-dun-dun. Anyways, here's where I tell you the whole setting of it. So it was the small lighthouse made of nine oak pillars, and it was built in 1776. So a quarter of a century later is when this incident occurred, in 1801. Oh, both their names were Thomas. So two people usually watched the lighthouse together. And this was common back then. So it was Thomas Griffiths and Thomas Howe. So I'm just going to say Griffiths and Howe to, like, help us separate them. Yeah, because my other suggestion would be Tom One and Tom Two. Like, Tom One and Tom Two. Yes. Griffiths and Howe were stationed at the small lighthouse. And this is in Welsh land, if that helps. Oh, my people have been there. Yes, your people. So the two men, apparently, as legend tells, did not get along. And they had been thrust together 20 miles from anywhere. So this is a small little lighthouse. No one is nearby for 20 miles. It is on an island, I believe. But I think that the closest person was 20 miles away. And this is 1801. There's no, like, car. Anyways. Griffiths became unwell after all it says in all the articles read, is a freak accident. And Howe tried to get help, but help did not come. The pair's remote location, the battering storms, and the analog means of communication at the turn of the 19th century meant that Howe was his only hope. After weeks of suffering, Griffiths died at the small lighthouse. Panicked, Howe was unassured of his next move. He was certain that he would be accused of murdering his colleague, who was in reality known to be a foe. If upon the arrival of other human beings at the post, there was only one man to be seen. Which I get, being, like, accused of murder. I'd be nervous, too, if I thought that was the first thing that came to mind. Yeah, yeah. Throwing the lifeless body of Griffiths into the ocean would incriminate him and paint a picture of crime he did not commit. So instead, he kept the body in the lighthouse. At least, that is, until the stench of the decaying man became to drown his senses. Which couldn't have been too long, because I hear it doesn't take that long for a body to start smelling. So, he made a coffin, placed Griffiths inside it, and tied it to an exterior shelf. But the storms continued to batter the small lighthouse at the rocks and at the lighthouse, and then, um, and at the mind of Hal, now a lone ranger in the middle of nowhere. So, nobody quite knows for sure how long Hal was alone with the corpse of his colleague, but it was thought to have been around three weeks. Oh, gosh. Ugh. However many days and weeks it was, it was long enough for trauma to seep in. Trauma caused by the isolation that came with nothing but waves for company. It's not like there's TV. And by the haunting presence of a dead body just a few feet away. Oh, my God. After all, this was not a large structure. The hut was less than five meters in diameter, so any attempts to escape the reality would have been futile. So, this is like, it's almost like a prison, because it's such a tiny enclave that he's in. It's like a mini Alcatraz. Yes. There's been quite a lot of discussion over the years about how the two men got on, explains Dr. Sion Rees, co-editor of The Whales in the Sea, which I love that. 10,000 years of Welsh maritime history. He says, I don't know for certain the nature of that relationship, but what is clear is that they must have been extraordinary people to be able to withstand those conditions. Hal had been a joiner previously, and he had made the coffin in which he put Griffith. That in itself must have taken a few days. Once he had finished it, he placed Griffith inside it and put the coffin on a shelf outside. But the extreme weather conditions blew the coffin apart. I know. There was not a lot of room in there, so Hal would not have been spared the sight of this. But the lights still burn, and there have been a lot of descriptions of ships going past and seeing the lights go on, not realizing what had happened. It's a tragic tale. The tragedy did not end with Griffith's death. Stories are told how one night that the wind blew apart the coffin, that led the recently departed man's arm to catch in the wind in such a manner that it was visible to Hal inside the hut. So he'd just see a dead man's arm waving all of a sudden. It's like a weekend at Bernie's. It really is, but more terrifying. But it's not, yeah, no. Only one can imagine this guy's mental state at this point. The only thing more frightening than being completely along with the course would be to have your former colleague beckon you from beyond the grave. Come on over. There are even tales of ship crews sailing past the lighthouse during the day and seeing this arm draped from a hurriedly made and wind-torn wooden box. Unable to make out what it was, they went about their journey and appreciated the glow that the lighthouse continued to emit. After weeks of storms and nightmares, the weather improved and a boat from Milford was able to reach the Smalls. Once there, they found Griffith, a dead man, and Hal, a broken man. The boat that took Hal back to the Pembrokeshire shore, but he was not the same person that had left the coast just weeks earlier. He was gray, disheveled, and empty. If you were isolated there, you were absolutely isolated. So, like, there's no one to talk to. You're in a small room. And... Ugh. I don't even know. Like, how do you keep yourself... I hope... Like, did he even have books? I don't know. You know what I mean? Yeah, because it's like, he may or may not have been able to read you. And usually they weren't left isolated this long, but the storms were so bad during this time period that that's what happened. Be creative, bro. Upon Hal's return, he was so severely affected by what had happened up there that people, even those close to him, did not recognize him. As with all tragedies, light must be taken from lessons learned. In this case... Oops. Shoot. I did something to my computer. Well, this is sounding like a whale of a tale. It is. Yes. As with all tragedies, light must be taken from lessons learned. In this case, the incident at the Smulls changed history and became a significant moment in the British Maritime. It was extremely important. Not only was it an early piece of lighthouse engineering and design, but it was vital for whales. There were 11 or 12 lighthouses in Wales at the time, but none were as isolated as this one, of course. The tragedy of what happened has always been very interesting, but it was symptomatic of the early days of the lighthouse. It was very dangerous to just have two people there. When you think about how many lives and ships were saved by people who manned lighthouses in those times, those men were heroic. But it was an important incident in history because there were never allowed to be two people on their own working the lighthouse after that. There had to be at least three. So that's kind of what changed. I feel like they should even up the ante to four. Well, now I think there's better communication, but I don't know how a lighthouse works. I think it's a little different now. It's probably all electronic, so you don't necessarily need sensors. I don't really think there's such things as... I don't know what their job is even called now that I say that. Lighthouse people? I don't know. Lightkeeper? Lightkeeper, yeah. It's a tale that attracts imagination and inspired two films and a play, and it's a bit of a horror story. The fact that the regulations were changed in 1801 means that the Smalls had played a very important role in maritime history. The old Smalls lighthouse was replaced in 1861 by a 41 meter tall tower that stands today. Then 126 years later in 1987, it was automated, bringing an end to a system that had seen UK lighthouses manned for generations. So, wow, as early as 1987. That's not that long ago. Yeah. So, that is the tragic tale of the Smalls lighthouse and whales. Whales. Isn't that crazy? One of my first thoughts... That is a true definition of what you were going to say. Because I was reading, because I'll get into... I have an article about two real stories that happened. And one of them said, they said the example that COVID cabin fever wasn't a real thing, which I debate. But it can't be true cabin fever unless you were isolated. So, if you were in a cabin in the middle of nowhere or at sea, for instance... And that is no communication with outside. You're only with the people. Like, this person's alone, but if cabin fever, like, a couple people are there together, like you're saying a family, but you're completely isolated because you have no contact with the outside world. I get it. That's true cabin fever. But I feel like after COVID, you could say it's got varying degrees now. I think so, too. There's a spectrum. Right. There's different levels, so to speak. So, that's my debate there. But I also, when I hear these stories about, like, dead bodies, my first thought is, oh, God, imagine the smell. I know. The smell would be so bad. It must be so bad. You can't, like, ever forget it, I hear. I don't ever want to experience that. I never do either, but, yeah. I, oh, no. No, thank you. I'm sensitive. I'm a delicate flower. All right. But what story do you have? My story, I'm actually, I'll go back to this portion, but I'll talk about the article that I read where I heard of two accounts. Okay. So, and then I think that'll tie things together very nicely. I like it. So, this article was from the New Yorker that I read, and it was the literature of cabin fever, but it doesn't really talk about the literature too much. I'm just talking about, like, two stories I read within this. So, it's like the inception of this new story. Okay. So, on October 31st, 2018, there was a story in the New York Post about a Russian scientist stabbed by another Russian scientist in a research station in Antarctica. The crime is uncommon on that continent, but what made this even more unusual, according to the Post, was that the one scientist, Sergei Savinsky, had attached the other Oleg Belguzov. Okay. Okay, I'm just going to refer to these people as Sergei and Oleg. Okay. Yeah, you just heard my interpretation. Because Oleg was giving away the endings of books. Oh, rude. So, that is why Sergei stabbed him, which, honestly, I can't blame him. At the isolated station run by Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, the two men had been together for many months. What's his name again? Sergei was reading books from the library to pass the time, and Oleg kept telling him the endings. Then, Sergei snapped and stabbed Oleg in the chest with a kitchen knife. Oh, my gosh. Oleg was flown to a hospital in Chile, where he recovered. Authorities brought Sergei to St. Petersburg and arrested him, charging him with attempted murder. The story went around the globe instantly, and around October 2018, New Zealand picked it up by the dozens. The Post cited it by its source as a story in the Sun, the British tabloid, checking online, including Russian sites. There was actually no solid source for Oleg giving away the endings of books. I think that was just something that was… He said to justify killing him? That was something somebody made up on why Oleg was stabbed. The stabbing did occur at Belogshausen Station, but the stabbing was blamed on alcohol. Later, a Russian judge dismissed the case against Sergei, who had no previous records. Oh, wow. They kind of made up this story about, oh, he was giving out the endings, and upon further inspection, it was found that it was just a drunken fight. Okay. But I will say, if that was true… So, therefore, it's fine. It's the truth. It's fine. It's fine. Don't worry about it. But, yeah, in my mind, I was thinking… It was a mistake. Can you imagine, like, you're reading Harry Potter, and then somebody tells you, and you're like, okay, what's the point of this now? Yeah. Or you're into, like, a really big series, like George R. R. Martin's Lord of the Rings. No. George R. R. Martin. I was thinking… Oh, my God, and you call yourself a fan of Game of Thrones. I thought you were going with books, and I was thinking J.R.R. Simpkins. Shame. Shame. But can you imagine just especially a really long series, and then someone says, oh, by the way, this happened, and you're like, mother fucker. Yeah, I'm already into Game of Thrones. I know exactly how that feels. Yeah, but someone, like, spoils it when you just started it. Oh, that's rude. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Like, you would be fuming. So, I kind of justified the stabbing, if that works out. But, I mean, they're both end of living, so, you know, we'll continue. And then with the story of Sergei and Oleg, everyday news coverage slipped into a prosthetic mode. COVID would not appear for another 14 months, but somehow everyone knew we were headed for a lockdown. That would drive everyone crazy. I argue this because I didn't see it coming. I didn't either. It was a huge conference. In September of 2019, I don't think I would have gotten it. Yeah, if you had known, right? But Oleg and Sergei were early victims of a soon-to-be global lockdown in 2020. Entwined today with COVID is the age-old mental malady called cabin fever. Yep. And here is another story. And it's kind of a mystery. But a man whose real name nobody knows showed up in Canada's Northwest Territories in the summer of 1931 and built a cabin on the Rat River, a tributary of the Peel deep in the bush. He had not acquired a trapping license from the Royal Canadian Mountain Police in Fort McPherson. And it seems strange because people who lived out in this area where he was building his cabin, they trapped furs for a living. Oh, okay. That's the whole reason they were even out there in this middle-of-nowhere area because that's how they made their living is trapping animals and, you know, selling their fur. So that winter, native people in the region complained that he was disturbing their traps and four Mounties journeyed the 80 miles to his cabin by dog sled to investigate to see what was going on. He shot one of them through the door and later escaped on foot, he escaped, mind you, and on snowshoes. So you can't, I mean, that's going to be a lot of energy. It's not going to be very fast, but he did it. And lots of energy, like you said. Can you imagine? He eluded capture for more than a month. He crossed a range of mountains and covering maybe 100 miles in the middle of winter. He killed one Mountie when a group of them briefly caught up with him and finally died in a shootout after a bush pilot who had been tracking him and radioed his location to his pursuers. The man was supposedly called Albert Johnson, but that might not have been his real name and nobody knows where he was from. So he's a complete mystery here. He has been called the Mad Trapper of Rat River. Books and movies have told this story and many have tried to research, but his origin and tales remain a mystery. Before the chase had begun, the Mounties had dynamited his cabin so he could not return to it. And not a lot of dynamite was required because the cabin was like 8 by 10 foot cabin in the remote Canadian Northwest. So very small cabin. And during the pandemic, people used the term cabin fever to refer to going stir crazy. And this is like I kind of mentioned it earlier. Technically, to catch cabin fever, you should be in a cabin. You need a huge amount of unoccupied landscape all around you, like the Russian scientists, for instance, or the boat, like you said, the lighthouse story. So that's true cabin fever. But, yeah, that's crazy. Isn't that crazy? That's so crazy. I like hearing like, I mean, it's unfortunate, like some real stories about cabin fever, which I know there are a lot throughout COVID, but I mean more like the isolation ones. Yeah, the isolation ones, which I was trying to find out more because the Antarctica one, that kind of reminded me of the movie The Thing. Yeah. Because that was a group of scientists out in a very secluded location. So that's more of a thriller horror. I don't know. I mean, it is, but they have something to keep them occupied. But it does have to do with like a relief. It wasn't just two people. That was a group of people, but I could maybe see them going a little cabin feverish, but just a wee bit. Just a wee bit. And I'll tell you another tale. Well, I'm going to just talk about the movie Cabin Fever a little bit. I've seen that. That's a fun one. I will never see it because of how horror-y it is. I saw pictures and I said that's enough. But this, I mean, Cabin Fever, the definition that already existed. So Eli Roth, who made and produced this film, obviously went off of that. So a little synopsis. Well, first I'm going to just talk about the disease. Cabin Fever is a highly contagious and extremely fatal flesh-eating virus. It's actually based off of a real-life medical condition called Necrotizing Fasciitis. Say that three times fast. No. F-A-S-C-I-I-T-I-S, which is often referred to simply as flesh-eating bacteria, which you see in the fucking movie and it is terrifying. That's an important distinction, as while the ailment in Cabin Fever is a virus, Necrotizing Fasciitis is a bacterial infection to entirely different things. Science. That said, flesh-eating bacteria is still an extremely serious condition to develop and can definitely kill those suffering from it fairly quickly if it isn't treated. The infection can spread to anywhere, their skin, including the face and eyes, and generally comes with flu-like symptoms. Most times, Necrotizing Fasciitis isn't noticed until it starts to hit bad, giving immediate medical treatment at the point of absolute necessity. Can you imagine, like, half of your face is melting off and you go to your friend and you're like, does it look bad? That said, flesh-eating bacteria is thankfully not a common problem, and the likelihood that most people ever contract it is small. The bacteria that causes Necrotizing Fasciitis bears the lovely name of Group A Streptococcus. The infection must often occur when the bacteria gets inside an open wound on the body, but it's not particularly contagious, assuming one takes proper safety precautions around someone with it or another serious bacterial infection. This makes the chances of a rapidly spreading plague like the one found in Cabin Fever very small, but we're going to go with it. So just to make people feel better at home, like, this specific disease can't spread as rapidly as it does in the movie. Also, Eli Roth made this with some personal history involved. The inspiration actually came from an experience he had while traveling in Iceland when he was 19. While working on a horse farm, he came into contact with rotted hay and contracted an infection that caused him to break out in sores. When he scratched, chunks of flesh fell off. One of the most gruesome and upsetting scenes of Cabin Fever is directly based on his experience as skin peeled off when he shaved. I remember watching that scene, and we were all just like 18-year-olds eating ice cream, and we were all like, ugh. But I was like, no, self-care. Ugh, that's not self-care. So do you want me to give you a little, like, story plot line? Yeah. Obviously. Obviously, I still want to hear it. Okay. As a last hurrah after college friends, basic names, Jeff, Karen, Paul, Mary, and Bert, which I love, so there's five. Oh, did I say Mary? I meant Mercy. I'm so sorry. Embark on a vacation deep in the mountains because that's where college students want to go. With the top down and the music up, they drive to a remote cabin to enjoy their last days of decadence before entering the working world. Then somebody gets sick with a fleshy new bacteria. Karen's skin starts to bubble and burn as something grows inside her, tunneling beneath her flesh. The group is so repulsed, shocked, and sickened, watching their friends deteriorate before their eyes, they lock her in a shed to avoid infection. As they debate how to save her, they look at one another and realize that any one of them could also have it. What soon begins as a struggle against the disease turns into a battle against friends as the fear of contagion drives them to turn on each other. The kids confront terror of having to kill anyone who comes near them, even if it's their closest friend. The survivors have to find help before they're all killed by the virus or by the local lynch mob out to destroy anyone who may have common contact with it. And do you want me to give you the spoiler on how it ends or not? I mean, if you don't want to hear the spoiler, then forward the podcast like 15-20 seconds because... No, like two minutes. Okay, two minutes. Do two minutes. Okay. But we're going to tell the spoiler alert, so that's your warning. So, basically at this point, all of the kids are dead at this point either by the sheriff killing one of them, right? I think so. In the hospital because of the disease and the three of them had died in the woods with each other, with the crazy local man, blah, blah, blah. But Jeff is the only one that is alive right now. He comes out of the woods because that's where he's been up until the end, where he was hiding and makes his way back to the cabin. As he looks around horrified that his friends are dead, he is suddenly shot to death by the Redneck Police. The murderous sheriff and his men take Jeff's body and pile it on top of others, which are burned in a fire pit. Oops. This is while unconscious. Paul is dumped into a stream by Winston. I'm guessing that's the sheriff, right? I think so. It's been a while since I've seen that. And left to die. Paul's body infects the water in the stream. Further down are two kids collecting water for their lemonade stand. They sell some lemonade to the sheriff, his deputies, and more locals at the store. A natural spring water truck leaves the store with bottles of infected water in the truck, meaning that this is all about to spread everywhere. Everywhere. That's how it ends. While it was made, I like this little tidbit at the end. While it was made long before the COVID-19 pandemic, because this came out in 2002, so that was a long time ago, 18 years before, the themes of cabin fever dealt with what we've all been going through the past few years. I mean, up until what? Let's all pretend. Now we're all back to kind of like normal. I mean, I think we all still have a little PTSD. If we mention it, then we all like shiver internally. So, what we've been dealing with. How do you stop the spread of a disease while still treating the infected people like human beings who are worthy of dignity and care? Roth was ahead of his time in suggesting that selfishness and paranoia would come to be more defining aspects of a pandemic than the disease itself. And I think that is so true. Yeah. And zing. And zing. Thank you, Eli Roth. Yeah. Sorry, I will never watch it. That's a little too gory for me. It's honestly, it's been a long time since I watched, because clearly I was, I was an 18 in 2002, but we did watch it like 2007 or whatever. Yeah. And I remember we all had our little pints of Ben and Jerry's, because of course we all had, we were working, having our own jobs, so we were like, let's go have a, like, go pick out an ice cream, and then we'll go back to so-and-so's house and watch a movie. And she was like, let's watch Calvin's Fever. And of course, it was me, Caitlin, and so we were like, okay, sure, why not? And we're watching it, and we're like, we're eating ice cream, and we're watching it. But weirdly enough, we all just kept eating the ice cream. Of course you do, because you're nervous when you're going to eat delicious ice cream. Yeah, I'm just going to eat you. I'm going to eat my Ben and Jerry's. I'm just eating it, like, covering my eyes, like, oh, my God. Yeah, but that's. But we were also laughing and kind of to it, like. Yeah, I bet. You got to laugh out of fear. You got to laugh the fear off. Yeah. It was a good time. It was a good ride. Maybe, I don't know. Yeah. If I get enough old fashions and Ben and Jerry's, I need to be like, okay, why not? Yeah. But I wanted to talk about another Calvin's Fever movie. A classic. A classic. One of my faves is The Shining. And the release date for The Shining was May 23, 1980. It was directed by Stanley Kubrick and based off of Stephen King's novel, which I think everybody knows Stephen King was not a fan of it because it didn't follow the tone and how he wrote it. Kubrick made it more of an art film. Yeah, I heard that there's some, like, differences. Yeah, like, that's not how Stephen King wrote the characters, necessarily, and they just, they clashed on it. But ultimately, King even talks about it today. He's like, you know what? It's an art film. That's his interpretation. Yeah. I think he compared it to an analogy was an old car that's been restored but doesn't have an engine. Oh. That's how I heard that in an interview of his. But I'm going to get to the plot. Have you read it? I want to read it. Okay. I think it'd be great to read it and then watch the movie. Watch the movie. But, like, actually compare the two to see what King was getting at. Yeah. So, the plot is that Jack Torrance, Jack Nicholson, becomes the winter caretaker at an isolated Overlook Hotel. That's what the hotel's called, the Overlook, in Colorado, hoping to cure his writer's block. He settles in along with his wife, Wendy, Shelley Duvall, and his son, Danny, Danny Lloyd, who is plagued by psychic premonitions. As Jack's writing goes nowhere and Danny's visions become more disturbing, Jack discovers the hotel's dark secrets and begins to unravel into a homicidal maniac hellbent on terrorizing his family. Yeah. And I was just thinking, now that we're discussing the plot and we've heard about the symptoms and discussed already, you definitely see Jack morph. He becomes irritable, boredom happens with his wife, there's moodiness, anxiety, isolation because they get snowed in at one point. Yep. Depression, so. I mean, they are isolated too. Yeah. That's the family of them. It's a huge, huge, huge motel. Hotel, yeah. And they have a radio, but, I mean, radios go down and not gonna spoil that for anybody, but also it was funny because during the pandemic, I think me and my sister were just sitting in the living room and we were, we might've even, I might've had the shining on and we were both like, you know what? It would've been great to have been stuck in a hotel. Think about it. I would say you have so much room for activities. Yeah. Like other than people have been stuck in like apartments or whatever. You could like, you have access to the gym 24 seven. So if you want to work on your revenge body, you totally could. Do it. You have the time. You could go do it. You could catch up on all of your shows. All of the movies used for, I would always say, oh, I don't have time to watch it. Well, now you have more infinite time. Yeah. You could be creative. Take up yoga. But what people were saying about during the pandemic. Yeah. But I'm talking about you're stuck in a big ass hotel. Yeah. And then ideally. When you're stuck in a mansion, like, oh, what is there to do? I don't know. Figure it out. You could ride a bike down the hall. Yeah. I would do it. Ideally, if there was a swimming pool and a double bonus. Yeah. Like, you have like spa treatments at your finger. Yep. I'm just saying they could have made it work for them. But it got to them. It ultimately got to them and it created a really good, very creepy, very horror filled film. Which is one of my recommendations. I feel like this podcast, we've given you plenty of recommendations. The Shining, The Lighthouse, Cabin Fever. I've seen all of them. The episode of Bob's Burger that is a replica of The Shining is great. Where Bob goes crazy in the crawl space of Lila's restaurant slash house. Oh, I love that. And he talks to Louisa's doll, or Coochie Copee. Coochie Copee. And it's phenomenal. I think I remember that. It's a great episode. That's one of the earlier seasons, isn't it? Yeah, it's in like the first eight seasons, not the later ones. I'll look it up. Because I do remember that one. Also, I'm going to recommend Muppet Treasure Island just for the Cabin Fever song. And if you don't want to watch the film, then you too that shit. Because it is catchy and it will turn that frown upside down. Oh my gosh, you're right. It is literally the second episode of the first season. Oh my gosh. I didn't know it was that. It's called Crawl Space. It's so good. That is a great, great episode. So I highly recommend that as well. A funny take on Cabin Fever, if you will. It is. He goes crazy in the Crawl Space. Oops. The walls are closing in on you. I do have one interesting thing I was thinking about earlier. So obviously, lay it on me. Nothing against people who go crazy during COVID. Or not COVID. Like Cabin Fever. I totally get that. I think I would too. I don't even know what I would do if I was actually secluded alone. But I think it makes a difference when you choose to do it. As opposed to being forced to do it. Yeah. I'm only saying this because I read a really cool article a while ago where it talked about, they were trying to look at how people sleep and eat and function when they have no light or anything. So have you heard about this woman who went down into a cave? Oh, God. And was there for like a little over a year. On her own. And she was able to communicate if she needed something every once in a while. Say she was supposed to be there for 400 days. I'll have to look it up again. I wish I had done a little more research. And so she had everything she needed to eat, sleep, and all that stuff. But there was no light. I mean, she can have her own artificial light. Right. But she doesn't know when the sun's up, sun's down. And it showed her sleeping patterns and how she slept without being told what time of day it is. And she was there all by herself. And she lost count after like a couple of months. And she was like, whatever. And so when they went down, they're like, all right, your 400 days is up. She said, no way. I didn't even think I had made it halfway through yet. Like time had gone by faster for her. Really? Yes. It was. And I was like, okay, that's because she chose to do it. Also, I think it takes a certain like mental capacity for that. But she volunteered, wanted to do it. I mean, that's a lot. Ugh. Woman cave experiment. Okay. Yes, woman spent 500 days isolating cave in a complete mess with her sense of time. She emerged with a cheerful grin and said she thought she had more time to finish her book. See, that's the answer, have books with you. I'm telling you, I love reading books. She had almost no contact with the outside world during her impressive feat of human endurance. For 500 days, she documented her experiences to help scientists understand the effects of extreme isolation. One of the first things that became apparent on April 12, 2023, when she emerged from the cave, was how fluid time is shaped more by your personality traits and the people around you than a tickling clock. Tickling. Ticking. Clock. When talking to reporters about her experiences, Flamini explained she rapidly lost her sense of time. The loss of time was so profound that when her support team came to retrieve her, she was surprised that her time was up and said, believe me, she had only been there for 160 to 170 days. So not even halfway through her time. So why did she lose her sense of time? Our actions, emotions, and changes in our environment can have powerful effects on the way in which our minds process time. For most people, the rising and setting of the sun marked the passing of days at work and social routines. In the darkness of an underground cave, without the company of others, many signals of passing of time will have disappeared. So she may have become more reliant on psychological processes to monitor time. One way in which we keep track of the passage of time, though, is memory. If we don't know how long we've been doing something for, we use the number of memories formed during the event as an index to the amount of time that has passed. Isn't that interesting? That's crazy. For Flamini, the absence of social interaction combined with the lack of information about family and current affairs, the war in Ukraine, the reopening of the Society of Covid Lockdown, may have significantly reduced the number of memories she formed during her isolation. I'm still stuck on November 21st, 2021. I don't know anything about the world. Isn't that crazy? So yeah, this was recent, so I guess that's why I read it. The loss of time may also reflect the reduced importance of time in cave life. Because there's not many memories we're going to have, you know? Flamini is not the first to experience a change in their experience of time after a changed environment. Similar experiences were reported by French scientist Michel Souffry during his two- to six-month-long cave expeditions in the 60s and 70s. The loss of sense of time was consistently reported by adults and children who spent prolonged isolated time in nuclear bunkers for research purposes at the height of the Cold War. So Flamini, however, lived with an empty schedule stretching out into her future. No work meetings to prepare for, no appointments to hurry to, and no social diary to manage. She led a self-paced existence where she could eat, sleep, and read as and when she liked. She occupied herself painting, exercising, and documenting her experiences. This may have made the passage of time irrelevant. As the biological rhythms of sleep, thirst, and digestion took over from the ticking of the hands of the clock, Flamini may have simply paid less and less attention to the passage of time, causing her to eventually lose track of it. After all, she decided to go into the cave, and she could leave if she wanted to, obviously, if she was like, I'm done. I know. Isn't that crazy? So yeah. I thought that was so fascinating. She was a Spanish woman, excuse me. I was wondering if I was going to talk about her sleep. I thought I read about that, but it may have been about the mid-60s and 70s. Had a weird sleep schedule. Like, he slept for a few hours and was up for a few hours. He slept for a few hours and was up for a few hours. Like, he slept for three hours and was up for eight hours. And then he slept for four hours and was up, like, all weird times of the day. That is really weird. But yeah. Anyway. Isn't that fascinating? That's just crazy. I'm just, like, mind-blown here. Oh my gosh. But I mean, she made loneliness work for her. Well, yeah. So it said she lost track of time after day 65, and she said, I got on very well with myself. Which, I mean, I think that's a big thing. Do you think she was doing, like, puppet shows on the cave walls? She said, yes. She had talked to herself, but never out loud. After all the times of the cave, it wasn't my house. Had to be respected. Aww. Aww. But yeah. So she had, like, kind of an interesting setup. She was able to work out, cook, obviously. She managed to keep fit, plow through 60 books, and use two cameras to chronicle her experiences for a forthcoming documentary, which I will definitely be watching if I can. You'll have to. And, like, report back and let us know how that is. She said the one thing that she really didn't like, or the biggest problem, was the flies. The invasion. There was an invasion of flies. They came in, they laid their larva, and I didn't control it. And so I suddenly ended up enveloped by flies. It wasn't that complicated, but it wasn't healthy. But that's just what it was. Yeah. So. Good for her. Yeah. Crazy, I know, right? Anyway, crazy, crazy, crazy. Well, we would like to take time to say thank you for listening to us, and please give us a follow on Instagram. Our handle is 2creepyghouls. Check us out for updates, cocktail recipes, and we appreciate you listening and going along with us on this journey. And if you ever are involved with cabin fever, please cope with it well. Be creative. Stay creative. Seek help. Stay in touch with friends and family. Because, uh, you've got cabin fever! Ghouls out! Thank you for watching!