The Monkey's Paw

Right.

And it it has a parody of a famous short story from 1902 called The Monkey's Paw.

So that's that.

Be careful what you wish for.

And it's a cool device, right? But we got to remember, too, that Barker, he kind of...

I don't know that he used this word, but I think he might have.

The monkey's paw is a conceit.

So almost like Hitchcock's MacGuffin.

Tuck in, everybody.

For W.W. Jacobs, The Monkey's Paw.

Without, the night was cold and wet.

But in the small parlor of Laburnum Villa, the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly.

The last face was so horrible that he gazed at it in amazement.

It got so vivid that, with a little uneasy laugh, he felt on the table for a glass containing a little water to throw over it.

His hand grasped the monkey's paw, and with a little shiver, he wiped his hand on his coat and went to bed.

In the brightness of the wintry sun next morning, as it streamed over the breakfast table, Herbert laughed at his fears.

Okay.

Because you picked a stone-cold classic, buddy, with the monkey's paw.

That's right.

By W.W. Jacobs.

Thanks, Jerry.

That's right.

So here we go, everybody, with The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs.

Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlor of Laburnum Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly.

And that's why I appreciated this.

Because the monkey's paw story has been...

Popularized in The Simpsons.

Oh, it's been popular.

It's an abstract thing.

Yeah.

Well, so in The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror 2, segment the monkey's paw, Lisa does wish for world peace, but that is when the aliens Kang and Kodos come and enslave the Earth.

See, there you go.

So all of these things combined to inspire King this horror story that is Pet Sematary.

The book was also heavily influenced by a 1902 short story by W.W. Jacobs called The Monkey's Paw, a story where wishes are granted but at a terrible cost, including bringing a son back to life.

And The Monkey's Paw is obviously such a well-known trope nowadays.

You've probably seen it or a version of it Across all different forms of media and stories, Pet Sematary also started life as a short story called The Return of Timmy Bateman, a version of which you can still find in the novel as a story told by Judd.

There have been two major movie adaptations, one in 1989 and one in 2019.

And this book entirely came out of that memory.

My agent said to me, we were just talking about The Monkey's Paw.

And she said, oh, you know, you should revisit, you should reread that because it's really good.

And I did reread it and I was sent right back to when I was a kid reading it in school.

I mean, I certainly was.

I think that there is a sort of heightened sense of your own responsibility when it comes to the things that you are saying and the messages that you are maybe, you know, consciously or unconsciously transmitting.

And so when I I knew that the monkey's paw was going to be my basis, I knew I had the wishing claw.

but I wanted to understand really what it meant.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I get in there and take like a Lovecraft story like we did Dagon and then The Monkey's Paw, which is a really fun, spooky story.

Good evening, my fellow horror fiends.

Tonight, we are delving into a foundational classic, W.W. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw, written in 1902.

It's so old,

Baby Yoda was still just a twinkle in old Yoda's eye.