Urban Legend Up Close - Crossroad Demon

In Crossroad Blues we first meet the Crossroad Demon, a wicked entity that can be summoned to grant your heart’s desire. The price? Eventually your soul will be claimed and you’ll be dragged kicking and screaming to hell. In this second season episode, Dean considers making a deal with the demon to bring his father back from the dead, but the junior Winchester ends up fighting temptation and instead saves a self-sacrificing, married man from the snapping jaws of hellhounds.

“And the day keeps on remindin' me, there's a hellhound on my trail”

So, does this powerful deal-making demon exist? No one can say for sure, but urban legend has it that legendary musician Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroad of Highway 8 and Highway 1 in Rosedale, Mississippi in order to be the best blues player there ever was. According to folklore, the young black musician was instructed to take his guitar to that intersection at midnight where he met the devil, who tuned his guitar and handed it back to him with the skill to play like no other.

“Early this mornin', ooh, when you knocked upon my doorAnd I said, ‘Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go. Me and the devil, was walkin' side by side’”

Other stories indicate the origin of the tale actually began with another Delta bluesman, Tommy Johnson. Yet, somehow, the mythology has best stuck to Robert Johnson. Perhaps because he seemed supernaturally gifted, maybe because he sang songs like, “Me and the Devil” and “Hellhound on my Trail,” or it could be because he actually died at a country crossroad near Greenwood, Mississippi. Despite Johnson’s 1938 death, some people believe the devil keeps getting his due anytime an artist sings Crossroad Blues. Eric Clapton, The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin and Curt Cobain have all sampled or remade Johnson’s devilish tune and met with great tragedy. Whatever the case, before you consider singing the song or heading for the nearest crossroad remember one thing…payback’s a bitch.

"Jump the Shark" episode recap

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!!!



Wellll, just GREAT. Tonight’s the night to do the recap and my TIVO decided the first 6 minutes weren’t IMPORTANT!!!! Actually, I think it’s the network. 6 minuters of recorded static. Still, GRRRR. Anyway, I came in when Dean pulled a gun on the kid, John’s son, under the table.

Wow, Dean is defensive. Poor Dean. What a shock to hear that John took such interest in this kid, that he taught him to drive the Impala, that he took him to a baseball game. The kid (still don’t know his name) got the normal life Sam and Dean never did.

And now Sam and Dean have to help him find his mom.

What terribly Photoshopped pictures! It looks like John still had a relationship with this boy’s mother. Is that why the kid called John for help? How much younger is this boy than our boys? If John passed through the town in 1990, he’s about 9 years younger than Sam. So John didn’t learn about him until Sam was in college. (I’m thinking about Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s own secret baby, too.)

ALWAYS with the scissors, Dean! But Sam would have never fit in that vent. (According to my brother, all that crawling around would be impossible.) And ew!!! All that blood and bits. Is this a shapeshifter?

Now it’s time to take the kid’s innocence. Sam insists the kid needs to know. He’s a bit trusting, though, taking it all in, accepting. This should have been a clue to me. Hey, there’s the journal. Haven’t seen that in awhile.

Ah, Adam. That’s his name. I should have remembered from the previews. And he’s pre-med, smart like Sam.

Sam needs to trim those 70s sideburns, do ya think? And stop pointing the gun at Adam when he should be teaching gun safety?



Dean’s touring the mausoleum, but I don’t think I know why. Is this a new body snatching or is he looking into John’s old case? Blast you, local CW! Love the mortician’s line: “Have you thought about where you’d like to spend eternity?”
And Dean’s response: “All the damn time.”

I bet.

So, graverobbers took corpses and opened them up. YUM.

So Dean goes into a bar and gives off a law and order vibe. There’s a joke.



It seems Joe the bartender worked the missing body case back in the day, and assured the locals they’d taken care of the culprit. Hm. And now the body-snatching creature wants Adam? And Sam is willing to use Adam as bait. Remember when Sam didn’t want to use the kid as bait in “Something Wicked This Way Comes?”

Sam is way hot shooting a gun, and also smiling proudly. Looks like he enjoys being the big brother for a change, having someone looking up to him the way he looked up to Dean.

Wow, Sam is telling the kid to cut off his life from friends, just like Dean told him in Season One, the first shapeshifter episode. Dean calls him on being like Dad, but Sam understands John’s attitude, now. He thinks whatever’s coming may be after revenge, but other creatures are out there who will want revenge against John and whoever John loved. Adam is meat if he’s not trained. Dean declares it’s too late for him and Sam, but Adam still has a chance to be normal. The brothers each wonder if the other is jealous of Adam’s innocence.



Here goes Dean, crawling through another tunnel. It’s gotta be a shapeshifter. Oh, YUCK, Sloppy Joe. Classic Dean.

And now, poor Dean, trapped in a crypt. I’m feeling a little breathless here. And of course he has to check out the coffin, which contains a blonde woman.

Hey, Mama’s home, and has gotten into the house that Sam thought he’d secured. Sam tries to drag the kid away from what he’s sure is not human. The kid gets the gun from Sam and his expression changes from confusion to wicked glee when he tells Sam he knows she’s not human, and plows the butt of the gun into Sam’s face, just as Dean opens another coffin to reveal the dead and mutilated body of….Adam.

Whoa. I bow to Kripke. Did NOT see that coming. (And I know I said that in my last review, but DAMN.)

And now Dean is desperate to get to Sam, who was so trusting with this kid.

What are these creatures, and what are they going to do to Sam? Hey, at least he’s not pinned to the wall.

Ah, ghouls. That’s new and unexpected.

Okay, I’m a bit jealous of the mama biting on Sam’s ear.

So Sam and Dean didn’t get the ghouls because of the fresh kills. Ghouls are usually scavengers, and they take on the forms of the last thing they ate, as well as thoughts and memories. “We are what we eat,” Mama Ghoul says.

I’m GROSSING out, the way they’re tasting Sam. Apparently John killed their daddy, who never hurt anyone alive (just ate dead bodies) but why did they wait so long to get back at him? It took 20 years to figure out revenge?

OMG, Sam is bleeding out! And what scars he’s going to have….all kinds. Dean busts out of the crypt (that has a stained glass ceiling? But is underground?) Why didn’t Dean shoot the kid in the head as soon as he was done with Mama Ghoul? That’s unlike him. Maybe if he’d aimed, and hesitated because he’d be killing his brother’s likeness, but no. He doesn’t even look at Adam, instead going straight for Sam, only to be attacked from behind. Dean comes out on top, but did go a little overboard on the beating in the head of the Adam ghoul. Ick. Why don’t they put tourniquets on Sam?

So the boys stand once again at a funeral pyre. What does Dean mean about Adam going out like a hunter? Just because the kid was killed by a ghoul doesn’t mean anything, right? Dean points out that Sam is more like John than Dean will ever be. Sam takes that as a compliment (!!) and Dean tells him to take it however he wants it. I don’t think Dean meant it as such.

Trish is here with me, and we’re puzzling over the purpose of this episode. What was the point? How did it move the story forward? Just to redeem John’s decisions to make his sons into hunters so they could defend themselves?

The dh asked why we’re surprised John had only one son we don’t know about. But in “Home,” John still wore his wedding ring. Being involved with a man like that would be weird, right?

So what do you think? Was this an important episode? Did it teach us anything new? Is it one you’ll watch over and over?

Urban Legends

One of the things I loved about Supernatural is the way the boys investigated urban legends. (I’m one who prefers the stand-alone episodes, though I know the show wouldn’t be the same without the myth-arc.) I loved the Bloody Mary episode, the Hookman, the Woman in White.

I know the boys have bigger fish to fry right now, but here are some cases I would love to see them on.

La Bruja Lechuza is a Mexican legend. She is a witch who comes to a house in the form of a giant owl-type bird, to take away someone who is close to death. Some of my students claim to have seen her, and are terrified of her. I would love to see the boys come to town (how about a San Antonio set show? Hmm?) and hunt her down, only to find out she isn’t what they believe her to be?

The Jersey Devil is another interesting urban legend, but from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t do much, like a chupacabra. It just eats livestock and freaks people out. Still, I have faith Kripke could make it a fun monster-of-the-week.

A haunted lighthouse would make a good setting for an episode. Maybe set during a hurricane or something…definitely with a love interest.

New Orleans…something in the cemeteries. I know, cliché, but again, I have faith in Kripke. Wouldn’t it be cool to see the boys vs. a voodoo priestess? Or working side by side with one?

But my number one wish for a setting is Stull Cemetery in Lawrence, Kansas. (I wonder if this doesn’t tie in to Mary’s family’s careers as hunters.) Supposedly, Satan can manifest there, and does on Halloween. His only son is rumored to be buried there, and when Pope John Paul II flew across the country, he had his plane avoid Kansas. Weird, huh? It’s said to be a devil’s gate, which I know we’ve done, but how cool would it be to have it in a real place? They could even go up against a group of Satan worshipers or something.

What stories would you like to see the boys tackle?

Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons and Ghouls

Part of Supernatural’s allure is the monster-of-the-week mythology. The paranormal bounty brothers never lack for things to hunt. In The Supernatural Books of Monsters, Spirits, Demons and Ghouls, Alex Irvine delves deeper into the creatures Dean and Sam have given us a basic introduction to.

The book is divided into five parts and includes two appendixes—Herbs, Oils and Hoodoo Hands and Names and Attributes of European Demons.

I’ll tell you my biggest pet peeve right off the bat...the book is supposedly narrated by both Sam and Dean, but it comes off like this weird omniscient point-of-view that sounds nothing like them. Their “voices” on the show are distinctive and unique and none of that is carried on to the page. It would’ve been better for the author to write as an interested observer, perhaps a professor or a paranormal investigator fascinated with the Winchesters. Typically speaking, the kind of narration Irvine chose would create reader intimacy, as if the boys were sharing secrets, but because we know their personalities so well, and he does not emulate them at all, it has an immediate and opposite reaction, repelling the reader to think, “Who’re these dudes?”

Come to think of it, the perfect narrator for this book would’ve been Bobby Singer!

That complaint aside, and admittedly it’s a big one, how does the lore fare?

SPIRITS covers the importance of salt and burn, the woman in white, banshees, water spirits, urban legends and vengeful spirits like the Hook Man and Bloody Mary, land spirits: native and immigrant, such as the Indian curse, Amityville, Route 55, Wisconsin Lakes Curse and the Curse of Kaskaskia, plus Venir (scarecrow), Lawrence lore and Death Apparitions.

MONSTERS is all about the Wendigo, Shapeshifters, Yenaldooshi, Bearwalker, Leszy, Nahuales, Puca, The Animal Wives (Selkies, Swan Maidens and Kitsune), Lycanthropy, Tulpas, Humunculus, Golem and Rakshasa.

GHOULS, REVENANTS, ET CETERA is a paranormal potpourri of Ghouls, Shtrigas, Draugrs, Vamps, Zombies and others.

WITCHES, FAMILIARS AND BLACK DOGS is just that.

And DEMONS gets down and dirty with Succubus/Incubus, Jinn, Tengu, Abiku, Pishacha, Acheri, YED, Lesser Demons, Reaper and Goofer Dust.

The book does a great job of reintroducing the MOTW and expanding on their details, oftentimes giving culture differences. Did you know a Leszy is a Slavic forest spirit that likes to makes its appearance as a talking mushroom? Or that the word zombie comes the from the Bantu word nzambi and Haitian zombies were created from magic and the poison of a pufferfish? And, considering the recent Death Takes A Holiday, I enjoyed learning that Reapers are called psychopomps. Doesn’t that sound scarily solicitous? I’ve also adopted the hoodoo tradition of Goofer Dust and now, much to my husband's horror, walk around whispering “Kiss my ass” everywhere in case a witch is present.

In blending show elements and deepening the mythological stories, The Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons and Ghouls is an entertaining and fascinating read, even if it does miss the mark on giving the Winchesters a voice.