Ep 217 Nightmare Fuel: The Bye Bye Man

Hello Addicts,

In 2017, a movie came out that introduced us to the entity known as the Bye Bye Man. It was an introduction to a boogeyman who hunted you just for thinking his name. Rather than offer a review of the movie, this week’s Nightmare Fuel looks at the legend of the Bye Bye Man.

The Bye Bye Man’s first appearance was in a short story by Robert Damon Schneck titled “The Bridge to Body Island”. The legend begins in an orphanage in the 1920s with a blind albino boy constantly teased by the other children. He attempts to run away several times, only for his plans to fail each time. Eventually, he escapes by stabbing one of his caretakers with a pair of scissors. After that, the young man lives a life on the railroad hopping on trains and killing at each stop. In need of companionship, he creates a dog with pieces of his victims, mostly eyes and tongues, who he names Gloomsinger. When the Bye Bye man feels someone talking or even thinking about him, he uses Gloomsinger to track them down. Once this creepy canine finds its quarry, he lets out a shrill whistle to alert his master, who then kills them.

The Bye Bye Man’s description is of a pale white skinned man with long hair wearing black glasses, a wide-brimmed hat, and a pea coat. There is a tattoo on his right wrist and carries a sack around with him. Inside this Sack of Gore are more pieces of his victims, which he uses to replenish a constantly decaying Gloomsinger. His preferred killing locations are along the railways, but he has wandered to people’s homes and used tricks to get them to open the door. This includes voice mimicry of someone you know. Make no mistake, once you open that door, you are his next victim.

Could this just be an elaborate story to scare people? Certainly. Can it be true? Possibly. The only way to know for sure is to think of or talk about the Bye Bye Man and listen for the whistle.

Until next time, Addicts.

D.J.

Five Good-Bad Horror Movies Set in the Louisiana bayou

Review by Lionel Green

A Louisiana bayou. Is there a creepier setting for horror? A marshy wetland shrouded by fog-covered cypress trees and beset by creatures lurking unseen amid the muddy swamp.

Yet the murky waters are strangely shallow in the pool of quality swamp horror movies set in Louisiana bayous. Many take a cheesy action-comedy approach to the story, while others simply fail to take full advantage of the surroundings, probably due to budget constraints.

What you end up with is a glut of films mostly mired in mediocrity. However, some are fun enough to watch if you’re a fan of low-budget horror that’s good-bad … or is it bad-good?

I grew up in the 1980s, so I don’t mind when movies mix in a little cheese with the gore. Sometimes it adds just the right amount of flavor.

Here’s a list of five of my favorite good-bad horror films set in the Louisiana bayou:

1. Hatchet (2006): This one’s a straight-up swamp slasher, and it’s just a good old-fashioned horror movie. A group of tourists embarks on a haunted swamp tour and runs into Victor Crowley, a disfigured freak of a man who’s back from the dead and wielding a hatchet. Crowley’s an awesome villain who’s played by Kane Hodder (who once played Jason Voorhees in a few Friday the 13^th films).

2. Frankenfish (2004): A not-so-classic creature feature, Frankenfish is a fun ride when genetically altered snakehead fish are accidentally released into the bayou, prompting an investigation. The special effects are probably better than they should be for a 2004 movie, and the cast gives it their all.

3. Venom (2005): A combo slasher/creature feature, Venom follows a group of teenagers terrorized by Mr. Jangles, a man possessed by 13 unlucky and evil souls. Mr. Jangles is another awesome villain, plus the plot includes voodoo.

4. Creature (2011) “Best watch your step. There’s worse things than gators, you know,” warns Chopper, played by the late Sid Haig in Creature, which introduces the legendary half-man/half-gator known as Lockjaw. Unfortunately, Lockjaw’s backstory was a little “out there” for mainstream audiences, and most critics trashed the movie in an epic way. Creature was actually released nationwide and scored one of the lowest opening weekends in history for a film released in more than 1,500 theaters, earning just $327,000 in ticket sales. It deserved better than that.

5. Snakehead Swamp (2014): I need more snakehead like Christopher Walken needs more cowbell. What can I say about this one? It doesn’t quite rise to the level of Frankenfish on the Snakehead-O-Meter (which is a totally scientific piece of equipment I just made up for this column). But at least there aren’t any sharks swirling around in tornadoes. That’s reason enough to watch Snakehead Swamp.

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Lionel Ray Green is a horror and fantasy writer, an award-winning newspaper journalist, and a U.S. Army gulf war veteran living in Alabama. Lionel writes a column for HorrorAddicts.net titled The Bigfoot Files. His fiction has appeared in more than two dozen anthologies, magazines, and ezines, and his short story “Scarecrow Road” won the WriterWriter 2018 International Halloween Themed Writing Competition.