Howling

Tonight we'll travel to Fukuoka, to a village that was never on any map, and a village that was erased from every map.

Welcome to the Valley of the Howling Dog.

This is Destination Terror.

Hello my fellow travelers and welcome back to Destination Terror, the show where we pack our bags, leave our common sense at the door, and visit the places that make people lower their voices.

Let's leave Mika standing at the bridge for a moment, because I want to tell you what's real about the place she's standing in, and it's a stranger story than the one I made up.

Inunaki is the city of Miyawaka, in Fukuoka Prefecture, on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands.

The word is written with characters for dog and for cry, and it's usually translated as howling dog or crying dog.

The mountain pass above the valley carries the name too.

Rabbles exotic to stranger gods praying, jumbles of odor that stifle the brain.

Legions of cats from the alleys nocturnal Howling and lean in the glare of the moon Screaming the future with mouthings infernal Yelling the burden of Pluto's red rune Tall towers and pyramids ivied and crumbling Bats that swoop low in the weed-cumbered streets bleak broken bridges, O rivers whose rumbling joins with no voice as the thick tide retreats, belfries that blackly against the moon totter, caverns whose mouths are by mosses effaced, and living to answer the wind and the water, Only the lean cats that howl in the waste.

Usually you want to resist or avoid the things that drag you down and out into the depths.

But tonight, maybe you should consider submitting, letting go.

So that was, that's always really special to get to watch that.

Howling is, I don't actually get to hear them howl super, super often.

So anytime I do hear them howling is one of my favorite things ever.

Just how the refuge is with those like open fields that sounds echo really, really well.

THEN THE UPHEAVAL OF SPRING WITH THE ICE JAMS AND TERRORS, THE MOOSE ROARING BY UNTAMABLE, THE TORRENTS RISING, RISING FOOT BY FOOT TO THE VERY DOORYARD OF HER FATHER'S HOUSE.

STRANGE SPIRITS WERE ABROAD AT NIGHT, HOWLING, SHREAKING, CRACKING AND GROANING IN VOICES OF ICE AND FLOOD.

HER INDIAN NURSE TOLD HER OF THEM ALL, OF MANABOSHO THE GOOD, OF NINABOSHO THE EVIL, IN HER LISPING OJIBWA DIALECT THAT SOUNDED LIKE THE SOFTER VOICES OF THE FOREST.

At last the sudden subsistence of the waters, the splendid eager blossoming of the land into new leaves, lush grasses, an abandon of sweetbriar and hepatica.

Now, while barking is an evolutionary adaptation for domestic life, howling feels like a ghost from the past.

It's a completely different mechanism.

Howling has an entirely different ancestral lineage.

While barking is heavily shaped by domestication, howling is a direct line back to the wild.

The research notes that howling is often breed-specific.