Poltergeist | Myth Movie Night
Spirits: Mythology, Legends, & Folklore
Multitude
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2022
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Con artists and harmful horror tropes and production scandals, oh my! We’re talking about the Spielberg classic, Poltergeist, the origins of these spirits, and how we can do better with our horror tropes.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of genocide, racism, violence, kidnapping, child endangerment, body horror, death, mourning, and misogyny.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: This Small Business Saturday, consider supporting your friendly local podcast collective! For $5 a month you get our weekly friendly debate podcast, access to our penpal exchange, monthly live events with the hosts, and much more. Join the MultiCrew and support Multitude this Small Business Saturday!
Sponsors
- BetterHelp is a secure online counseling service. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/spirits
- The Other Path is a new folklore-inspired podcast available in your podcast app now!
- Gilded Age Cocktails, Jazz Age Cocktails, and Midcentury Cocktails is the newest book from NYU Press. You can get 30% and free shipping when you input code SPIRITS-FM on nyupress.org.
Find Us Online
If you like Spirits, help us grow by spreading the word! Follow us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. You can support us on Patreon (http://patreon.com/spiritspodcast) to unlock bonus Your Urban Legends episodes, director’s commentaries, custom recipe cards, and so much more. We also have lists of our book recommendations and previous guests’ books at http://spiritspodcast.com/books.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm |
| 0:02.0 | M. |
| 0:05.0 | The Welcome to Spirits podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. |
| 0:33.3 | Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. |
| 0:36.5 | I'm Amanda. |
| 0:37.1 | And I'm Julia. |
| 0:38.1 | And this episode 312 talking all about Poultergeist, baby. |
| 0:42.3 | Ah, the movie Poultergeist. |
| 0:43.9 | What a wonderful and weird movie with a really interesting background and a lot of stuff for us to talk about. |
| 0:51.4 | Incredible. |
| 0:52.0 | It really is a classic of the genre in a way that you sort of |
| 0:55.6 | forget. Like when we talked about the Halloween movies, I was like, oh yeah, I guess this wasn't |
| 1:00.6 | always a thing that we talked about. Like, I guess teenagers didn't always die after having sex |
| 1:05.4 | and horror movies. Like it is a thing that comes from somewhere. And I love the chance, Julia, to |
| 1:09.2 | talk about the origins of those |
| 1:10.8 | tropes with you. Yeah. And people forget how fucked up some Spielberg movies can be. So this one in |
| 1:16.0 | particular is pretty fucked up. But Julia, whenever we do a myth movie night, we always have to sort of |
| 1:23.2 | flip a coin. We made Eric do it last time and talk about a two-minute summary of the movie. So are you |
| 1:29.0 | feeling prepared and spooky and ready to do that today? I always feel prepared and spooky. |
| 1:33.8 | Yay. It should be fine. It was a loaded question. Let me get my timer up real quick. Beautiful. |
| 1:39.8 | All right. Ready? I'm ready. Are you ready? Always, baby. All right, let's do it. So the Freeling family lives |
| 1:45.1 | in a planned community and they have three kids, Dana, Robbie, and Carol Ann. Carol Ann starts doing |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Multitude, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Multitude and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.