It’s November 1st, the Day of the Dead, and in honor I’d like to share a piece I wrote last year around this time, “The Anthropocene is Haunted.” But I’m doing so with a twist: in recent months Substack has launched a number of features making it easier to deliver audio content as well as written posts. We’re giving that a go here, with a recording of this essay.
Take a listen and then tell me: would you like to receive more Unsettling content in audio form like this? Let me know by answering the the poll below.
And thanks to reader and Substack author Con/Jur/d for pointing out last year that this was no random phantasm but Papa Guede himself that I had seen. As someone with precious little knowledge about the cultural history of voodoo, I wasn’t familiar with popular representations of its spirits. So it was something else to do a quick online search and come up with plenty of images that clearly matched the figure I met that night in the woods.
Poll below, and original version of the essay here.
Thanks for reading, and listening! Until next time,
Meg