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Closer to Home explores how the concept of home shapes our understanding of the world. Through personal insight, critical reflection, and guest conversations, we examine the forces that affect our sense of belonging, and ask whether the housing crisis is really a crisis of home, connection, and rootedness.
Hannah (00:00)
Hello. We're really pleased to welcome Leila Taylor to today's Halloween episode. I first came Leila's work, Sick Houses, Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread, and was absolutely gripped reading this book.
I did manage to sneak a quotation into a government consultation as well. So I think it's a book that's got a lot of different angles and perspectives on it. But Leila, could you tell us a about what motivated you to write this really excellent book?
Leila (00:35)
Well, I've always loved haunted house stories and haunted house movies. It's my favorite genre of horror movies. And I kind of get crushes on houses. I kind of fall in love and get obsessed with houses and buildings. And I came across a photograph of this house in New Orleans. I just saw the photograph and I didn't know anything about it. And it looked
so strange to me. It was, it looked like a house, it was pink house that had been cut in half. And looked out of proportion. looked wrong. For lack of a better word, it just looked wrong. And it gave me the creeps. And I was trying to find research about it because I didn't understand And
Hannah (01:22)
Mm.
Leila (01:29)
I found out that it was a slave quarter. It was an urban slave quarter. And it had been attached to the larger big house. And the reason why it was cut in half or looked as if it was cut in half is because it was facing the quote unquote big house. So it's, you know, forward facing, you know, facade.
was not facing the street like a normal house, it was facing the big house. And I thought, that's why I might not have known what its purpose was. I might not have known that it was a slave quarter, but I kind of intuited that there was something wrong with this house by its structure, by its architecture. And I started thinking about all the other houses and buildings and structures that I...
Hannah (02:14)
Mmm.
Leila (02:24)
get that feeling with that I get that kind of eerie, creepy feeling of wrongness with. And I started thinking, why? Why is
Hannah (02:32)
you
There's something there, isn't there? mean, from what you're describing there, it feels like almost...
you know, a haunting of an era's prejudice is expressed in the buildings. But then you have that juxtaposition as well of like the most ordinary family seeming homes as well are subject to those same same hauntings. So I just wanted to juxtapose, you know, the eerie building you kind of that triggers that hauntedness versus the family home, which you don't associate immediately with these types of hauntings.
Leila (03:06)
Yeah, exactly. And I think that there are very little things that can happen in a structure. Things that just might seem a little bit off. Things that signify a little bit of lack of comfort. Something that signifies that something that is supposed to be ordinary, something that's supposed to be structured, something that's supposed to be in control, something that's off. get a lot with abandoned buildings.
a lot with It's that unheimlich, that unhomey feeling in a building that suggests that haunted feeling.
Stephen (03:44)
You cite quite a few examples of this, different kinds in the book Leila, which is an amazing read, but you've immediately made me think of a couple of examples. So you talk about Ted Kaczynski's cabin for example and you getting really unnerved by the fact that there's no door handle, there's no door knob on it because...
I think your conclusion was you wasn't expecting visitors, so there wasn't really any utility in having a doorknob. But there's some other houses that are, whether they're haunted in the conventional understanding of the word or not, are, even if it's just this, very geometrically unsettling.
Hannah (04:19)
Mmm.
Leila (04:20)
Yeah, I got obsessed with the Unabomber Cabin. Yeah, maybe a little bit too obsessed. And I think also part of it is that it felt geometrically perfect in a way that wasn't human. was something a little too perfect about the proportions of the door and the placement of the windows felt odd. Like it didn't
Hannah (04:32)
Mm.
Leila (04:46)
feel like a structure that was meant to be experienced from the outside in. It did not feel like a space where people would be going into. It just felt like something where someone would be inside and never come out of. Like the windows felt like they were for someone who was inside looking out and only inside looking out.
And like you said, the door had padlocks on it, but not a doorknob. And there was something that's very human about a doorknob. It's like a little hand that's a little invitation that you grasp. And not having that doorknob, only having locks kind of takes it out of the home category and turns it into like a shack. And a lot of people...
Hannah (05:30)
Yeah.
Leila (05:42)
automatically thought or they told they rendered him or they made him seem like he was crazy. Everyone said he must be insane because he lived in this tiny little home. Ted Kaczynski wasn't crazy because he lived in a small home. Lots of people live in small homes because either they have to or they want to. That wasn't the reason why he was insane. The size of his house wasn't it, you know?
Stephen (05:49)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Leila (06:09)
But it was those little details, the fact that he never made that structure into a home. It was always a bomb factory. It was a shack that was a bomb factory.
Hannah (06:23)
That's so interesting, I think juxtaposed with the building that was thrown up for the slave quarters and it being in that sort of secondary position to the main house and how the angles and that, I remember the picture from your book and it just seemed like a thrown together.
afterthought not not carefully designed designed for for humans to live in and then it such a juxtaposition with the uniformness yet wrong angles of the Unibomber which we kind of associate because he was a very meticulous person home making these these bombs with his and he was a mathematician wasn't he as well so I think I was just struck by that meticulousness of of how you describe his property but the unfriendliness of of
Stephen (07:07)
you
Hannah (07:11)
the whole presence.
Stephen (07:14)
So there's a human quality in the home that we're looking for as reassurance, it seems. So I think you mentioned, I can't remember whether it's in the context of Ted Kaczynski or not, but you talk about something feeling a little bit inhuman about the over-application of the golden ratio , being too mathematical because the home is about human expression, is about a certain degree of messiness, a certain amount of deviation from rectilinear ⁓ quality.
and
there's all sorts of things that follow from that about architecture that works and architecture that doesn't work for people. But we're reading from that perhaps something that is about home comfort, something that is about predictable warmth, affection, know, togetherness. the genre of horror plays with...
the fragility of that or the absence of that to some extent, doesn't it? I mean, you make you make a comment quite early on in the book that the haunted house movies often start and they almost always do actually thinking about it with a lovely, typical, usually white middle class, as you quite rightly point out, American family moving into this house. And we all know where that's going to go.
Leila (08:24)
Yes.
Yeah, there's this sort of desire for perfection and for idealism. And there is this need for this controlled, perfected, middle class American dream idea of a home, so to speak, especially at least in America.
Hannah (08:43)
Mm.
Leila (08:48)
that having that home is this precursor to upward mobility, to social standing. It is a sign of being a part of society. It's a sign of having not only ownership of property, but kind of ownership of yourself. It's a sign of autonomy. It's a sign of citizenship. It's a sign of
Stephen (09:09)
Hmm.
Leila (09:13)
of Americanness, that's a sign of being a part of your community. There's something about having this step of home ownership, of taking that place in society that has this huge meaning in our culture.
Hannah (09:31)
we struggle, I think culturally to talk about hauntings because it always has to be spoken with provisos of like, I've heard this from a friend of a friend. It's not what I actually believe. Yet we're quite happy to talk about dreams in a more culturally acceptable way, but you've just triggered for me. was talking to a taxi driver about making this podcast yesterday and he was like, are you aware of the haunted house in the area where you live? was like.
Stephen (09:46)
Mm.
Hannah (09:58)
No, I'm not. Tell me more about it. And the main sort of things he was telling me was property was really difficult to sell. It was worth £400,000 and they were trying to sell it for a thousand. And what really stuck for me was he was like, and what's happened is when people have bought it, they've tried to decorate it, they go to sleep, they come downstairs the next morning and all the decorating's been undone.
So there's these two real cultural landing points that they were really keen to communicate. The cost of the home had been impacted and you couldn't make it. You couldn't decorate it. You couldn't invest in it. And I have to say, I did find the property. I did look it up on Zoopla. It did sell. It sold for 400,000. It's now worth 700,000. And it turns out its history was there was some sort of land dispute, but the haunting story seemed to have come from this.
because it's on a very nice street nearby where I live. Why is this property empty? So then this myth fills up the space. But the myth is all about the dream of home ownership being corrupted.
Leila (11:07)
and that's old, that idea of a haunted space lowering the value of a property. There's a story, I think it might be the oldest version of this. It's Pliny the Younger wrote a story about buying a property or a friend of his told a story about buying a property. This is ancient Rome, And hearing rattling of
of chains or hearing moaning hearing that this property or this land was rumored to be haunted by spirits or whatever. he wanted to get a lower price. He was asking his friend, like, shouldn't I be paying less for this home? Because everyone thinks that it's haunted. So this idea of a ghost lowering property value has been going on forever.
It's the Scooby-Dooification of homeownership.
Hannah (12:03)
You
you
Stephen (12:08)
I mean, I think it's fascinating we're talking about the dream, you know, the American dream, the dream of home ownership, that act of self actualization as defined by.
our current version of economics and we need to be quite careful about that but it's interesting that actually maybe 2000 years old this idea I was amazed to read in the book as well one of the things that made me laugh out loud because I couldn't quite believe it was that in some states there is a requirement on vendors to disclose whether there have ever been any rumors association of that property with things that I suppose constitutionally at least don't exist
Leila (12:28)
yeah.
Stephen (12:49)
So it's quite quite a conundrum, but there is a ⁓
Leila (12:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Hannah (12:52)
Are you haunted by a legal ghost or an illegal ghost? Is it squatting or does it have rights?
Stephen (12:58)
But there is that tension between dreams and nightmares there, isn't there? Because the American dream, the romanticism of that achievement and that supposed chancre la of home ownership and all the rest of it, and it happens for some people. It's not a myth. It can happen, but it can also be very fragile and it can also come with a lot of risk and a lot of anxiety. And all of this predates things like the subprime mortgage crisis, which was a particularly brutal
Leila (12:58)
Yes!
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Stephen (13:28)
period for people who were on the margins of home ownership. But some of the horror narrative seems to be about this dread that that could be taken away.
Leila (13:40)
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a big trope of, think, trying to remember the name of the chapter, but what's the catch? Which is the idea of, usually it's a family who's the kind of modest means, working class family, who are getting a house that is much much bigger, much more expensive than they normally could afford, that are getting a deal.
for some unknown reason. ⁓ And there's usually a catch and they don't know why. And they find out shortly why usually because it's haunted. So there's this lore. There's ⁓ this lore of something larger than what they normally could have. And they think that they're kind of reaching a little bit beyond their means and getting something beyond what they could expect. But they're not, they can't quite get it.
Hannah (14:10)
Mmm.
Okay.
Leila (14:37)
This is very kind of Amityville horror story. But then there's also the trap idea, and this might be the kind of mortgage idea, is a family who puts all of their money into a home. Everything they have is put into this home. Then they find out it's haunted, but they can't leave. They're stuck there. And that's, I think, probably the problem with the mortgage is that you can't go anywhere.
You can't afford to leave because you put all your money into it, so you're stuck in a haunted house.
Hannah (15:08)
You know, that resonates a lot, I think, with my and Stephen's background in social housing and renting. It's just reminded me of a tenant I interviewed who'd spent £6,000 getting into debt, investing in making a home. Because I think some of what we're talking about here is turning a property into home and how the property is resisting that stamp being put on it. But the home wasn't possessed by a ghost, it was possessed by rising damp, basically.
But it's almost like that, the haunting is the imaginary when there are these very real things, because homes are quite technical objects as well as these imaginary objects. And if you're projecting these dreams onto them, know, there's a reality, there's a grounding to it. But I was really fascinated in your book how this make this notion of making and unmaking was present in some of the home based horror films.
and the way nature played a role in taking possession of the property. I wonder if you could unpack that a little bit more for us, because I found that fascinating.
Stephen (16:14)
Mmm.
Leila (16:16)
yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stephen (16:16)
what you meant Hannah?
Hannah (16:16)
There was a story
of a witch in one of the films and her property was very green and expensive. Ash, thank you. Yes, yes, yeah. You have a memory for titles. I don't. I remember the atmosphere of reading that and just thinking, I've got to see that movie.
Leila (16:24)
⁓ Brand New Cherry Flavor.
Yes, yes, Brand New Cherry Flavor Yes,
Yeah, that's an incredible, I love that show. In this television series, there's this sort of exchange of power between witch figure her kind of young.
a protege and there's this exchange of power between the two and the spell kind of flows between ⁓ the home and the witch comes from the jungle, right? So she brings a small potted plant to the woman's home as a sort of present and essentially a jungle blooms.
inside of this person's apartment building, essentially turning the inside or the outside in and making a jungle inside of this person's apartment. And there is this kind of naturalization of the inside of the place. And there is something kind of wild and witchy about making a man-made space wild again.
Hannah (17:27)
Mm.
I'm looking at my plants now with a bit of a side eye.
Stephen (17:46)
with it.
you got lots of spider
plants Hannah? Because that would be the right type for a Halloween special.
Hannah (17:51)
I have, I am not in the 80s,
I'm not time locked in the 80s. I've got quite a lot of bougie plants that I've bought from the independent plant shop up the road because I am a doctor and I must buy middle class plants apparently.
Stephen (18:03)
I only mention it because I
was slightly fearful of spider plants as a child simply because they were called spider plants.
Hannah (18:09)
Same here! I was like, why have we invited this plant in the house that brings
in spiders? I was like, why are the adults doing this to us? I had exactly the same thing. glad to say I've not seen one for sale.
Leila (18:18)
you
Stephen (18:21)
Well we have these anxieties
don't
This nature thing is so constant because I can think of several films where there's a very rapid and aggressive invasion of kind of flora into the home as either part of some kind of spell or some kind of reaction from forces that we're not meant to understand.
but also the abandoned house is often taken over by nature. And you quote Walt Whitman in the book, making a statement about dominion basically, which is so central to actually the mythology of the United States and manifest destiny. Nature is not supposed to prevail, of course, but everybody knows that it can, but that seems to be a source of dissonance.
Leila (19:11)
Yeah. Yeah. I think ⁓ one of the most incredible, one of the things I really fell in love with is when you talk abandoned spaces, you mentioned kind of earlier about abandoned spaces, is when nature takes over, is when nature takes over man-made structures and constructed spaces. I grew up in Detroit.
And for a while there, I was ⁓ kind of obsessed with, as a lot of people were, with the quote unquote ruin porn of Detroit ⁓ photography. And you would see images of urban spaces, office buildings, schools, shopping malls that had been overrun by nature. So you'd see an office space that was
Stephen (19:44)
Mm-hmm.
Leila (20:04)
covered in moss, a school swimming pool, a school gym that had a wooden floor that had been warped so it looked almost like ⁓ waves. ⁓ getting this strange sense of ⁓ a little bit of the Anthropocene, a little bit of a post-apocalyptic world, this sense of what the planet would be like when people aren't here.
when nature has taken over and there are no more humans. So it's this very uncanny, eerie feeling of ⁓ a world without human beings that you're getting a chance to see right here and now, which can be thrilling ⁓ and frightening at the same time.
Hannah (20:46)
Mmm.
I found that you've just triggered a long lost memory for me when I used to do a lot more hippie hitchhiking and one time camping next to an abandoned Travelodge. And I just really struggled to sleep that night because it was this, you just, there was something just wrong about a building that's supposed to have people in it, not having people in it.
It just made the whole experience far more eerie. But then I think there can be this positive side to the possession or repossession of space by nature as kind of a healing act as well. But we don't really associate hauntings with healing. Did you come across any positive haunting? Well, I can...
I can think of one positive haunting story but I'll bring that up. Did you find any positive haunting stories when you were researching this book?
Leila (21:48)
I ⁓ love the movie A Ghost Story. ⁓ And it's essentially a ⁓ movie about a man who's passed away and is sort of seeing ⁓ his ⁓ spouse and the life that goes on in this house around him, right?
And ⁓ it's very kind of sorrowful, you know, it's not a scary movie. It's a very sorrowful movie. But the thing that I find so kind of lovely about it is this idea that, that a ⁓ haunting, whatever you want to call a haunting, if it's a trace of an event, a spirit left behind or something, is that this idea of time overlapping of
Hannah (22:41)
Mmm.
Leila (22:43)
the present of the past and the present kind of happening simultaneously or that an entity, whatever that is, can sort of see the passage or the experience of a place over eons of time. know, this person sees what was his house, bulldozed over, know, becoming a office building.
becoming a different office building, becoming a park, seeing the evolution of the space over years and years and years. And whether or not, I don't know if that's happy, I don't know if that's good, that's bad, but I find it sort of kind of beautiful is being able to see the evolution of one particular spot. Like if you could see what happens to one little plot, one house, just what happens to one house.
Hannah (23:35)
Mm.
Leila (23:43)
over 300 years, there's something kind of lovely about that, about that experience. There's a movie called Presence that's kind of relatively recent, that's from the perspective of a ghost, you know? And I think that idea or that interpretation of hauntings can be kind of quite lovely about seeing the world from that perspective.
Hannah (23:43)
Yeah. Yeah.
the example came up in a piece of research I did called Home Encounters, and I interviewed one
woman about her experience of living in her property. And the research was really about having the landlord visit the property. But she wanted to tell me about how her property was haunted by her husband. And obviously, I can't put this in this fancy report that's trying to influence government. But it was fascinating because she did not want to move from this property. She still had a
what you'd expect when somebody's passed, like, you know, the memorials where you keep the photographs, you always create a mini shrine. But what she described was almost a stereotypical haunting of apparently, he'd come along and like turn off the electricity. And she'd be like, I know it's him. I know it's him. It's not something he would do while he was alive, but she was absolutely convinced it was him. And this was the sign to let her know that he was still there. And she felt very held.
Leila (25:01)
Mm.
Hannah (25:08)
by this haunting. But now I'm thinking when the next people move into this property, are they going to feel the warmth of this haunting or is it going to turn into the haunted flat that gets very difficult to let?
Leila (25:24)
That's lovely. That's lovely.
And that's very comforting. And it's also, I love the idea of sort of using the space, of using the actual materiality of the space around you, the ordinary things that you sort of take for granted in your house, in your apartment, your phone, your window, your curtains, whatever, that are just part of your ordinary life suddenly kind of become a bit magical.
They tranform into something ⁓ so powerful in that way. They become tools. They become tools for communication.
Hannah (25:57)
Yeah, yeah, that was really beautiful way of putting it, but I think it's hitting on those notions of ease and unease, isn't it? And you just triggered that memory of that joyful haunting.
Leila (26:09)
So when you have a haunted house story, which is essentially a family story, it's a story about a family much more than it is about building. The more you have different kinds of families, that's an expression of the culture. That's an expression of how we show an expansion of how we
show what families are in the culture. now you're gonna, hopefully, my God, hopefully I say this as an American in the year 2025, more queer families, having more families of color, having more mixtures of families, having different kinds of family structures are gonna be more and more important.
Hannah (26:36)
it
Stephen (26:54)
suppose, I mean, I absolutely agree that that will change and evolve and correctly so. But some of the history of fear and anxiety, not just in kind of horror films and horror writing, but just the very notion of the witch is based around, it seems to me, a fear of subversion, of homeliness, irregular behavior, people that don't create just the comfort of normality, I think is kind of the way that you express
Hannah (27:14)
Mm.
Stephen (27:23)
it in the book and that leads to you know the perfectly innocent single woman becoming the witch.
Hannah (27:32)
There's something as well I think about the I said just just with the witch notion what comes to me as well is more there's a sense of Trying to get into the witch's house even though you know you shouldn't like the family films tend to be we start from the position of the family And they're introduced to the home well with the witch stories you tend to be introduced to the home And then it's about getting access,
Leila (27:33)
Yeah, I think...
Stephen (27:56)
it would be a gingerbread house, wouldn't it, Hannah? you know, she's pretending to be all kind and, you know, maternal, but in reality it's a nasty trick. But they don't... There's nothing about men who... There's nothing about single men who are threat to children. This isn't covered in any of this. That's much more likely.
Leila (27:59)
Yeah.
Hannah (28:07)
like the spider plants.
Leila (28:07)
You're the wit.
No. Well, yeah.
Hannah (28:15)
It's because they're tidily, they're tidily put
in prison where they belong and we do not ever talk about that at all because society is dealing with male violence absolutely fine. Don't look there.
Stephen (28:22)
⁓ yeah.
Leila (28:27)
Well,
⁓ the home is the purview of women. The home has always been the space for women, right? It's always been the way, right? And the thing that I love about the witch house is that it is a space for, that is not for the family. It is a space that is not centered around domesticity. It is not centered around
Hannah (28:32)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Leila (28:53)
raising children is not centered around taking care of other people. It is about that one woman and normally a single unmarried middle-aged elderly woman with no kids, right, who has power, who is magical. Magical could be scientific, could be, you know, could be, you know, a crafting person, could have all sorts of power in themselves.
and who only kind of cares about her needs and herself. her home is not about making a space for other people. And historically, the home has been a place for a woman to make a space for other people, for her family, to make a domicile for others.
Hannah (29:40)
you.
You know, you've hit on something of as I transitioned into my witchy woman years, which I'm wearing with much pride, but no spider plants. The amount of people who would warn me like this, like, ⁓ be careful, especially if we'd have any neighborhood stuff kick off, because I've got a gob on me and I will just intervene.
And I'd never had the same warnings when I was in relationships and related to homes. it's like, statistically speaking, it's being in a relationship that's the bigger risk. So there seems to be this cultural desire to make me fearful of actually something that's given me so much pleasure and enjoyment. I'm loving the witch thing. Just please no one run up to my door and buzz the bell and run away again, because that'll just be tiresome. I've got my cat on my sofa.
Leila (30:22)
Exactly.
Me too.
Hannah (30:31)
very bonded to.
Leila (30:34)
Me
too. I kind of describe my dream. My dream is to be sort of the house on the block that the kid that has the mythology of being the scary witch house that children on the block would be afraid to ring the doorbell. And a friend of mine said, you know, want to be feared. You want to be feared. Is that it? And I'm like, yes, exactly. want to be feared. But that one kid.
that's brave will come up to my doorbell and, you know, offer them some lemonade or whatever and they'll realize that I'm actually pretty cool and, you know, and that's my goal, you know. But again, the thing that I love about the idea of the witch house is that it sort of defies expectation. It's a space that's sort of centered around women, ⁓ either one women or multiple, a coven of women where they do
what they want, not what other people want them to.
Hannah (31:32)
you
Stephen (31:32)
feels as though there's something liminal going on here about the difference between expectation, perception and reality in terms of how things are represented because the witch in fiction is somebody who might appear cool, she might offer lemonade to the kids on the street, but it's all about some ulterior motive.
But people don't exist at one end of the spectrum or the other. There's this complex relationship that people have with good motivations and maybe not so good motivations. And it's a bit of a strange thing to bring up. wonder if there's a bit of a link here with, because you talk about dolls and doll's houses in the book, because they're constantly appearing as a motif in horror. And they are a bit unsettling, I think, for various reasons. But I was thinking about the way children play with things like that.
Hannah (32:17)
spooky.
Stephen (32:29)
And they're not, generally not in my experience acting out this perfect American family thing. There's a lot of very brutal morality tales that are told by children through dolls and a lot of implied violence actually, which is probably an important part of children's emotional development. But it does spook people
Leila (32:51)
Yeah, man, little kids in scary movies ⁓ freak me out so much. The bad seed and all that, children of the corn, ⁓ gosh. Yeah, that's the worst.
Hannah (32:58)
Children of the corn.
Stephen (33:02)
Children have a call on now. I
watched that very late at night when I was about nine ten years old and there was a power cut in the middle of it.
Leila (33:09)
No. That's the worst.
or the brood. I don't know if you saw the brood. Yeah, that's what I think. Isn't it good? Yeah, that's what I think that the dollhouse, well, one thing I think also the dollhouse kind of functions as a doppelganger of our actual houses, which is creepy in and of itself. And I tell people do not make a dollhouse version of your actual house. That's just.
Hannah (33:16)
that's so good. ⁓ yeah. Yeah.
Leila (33:39)
you know, a nightmare waiting to happen. But yeah, I think there is this illusion that children or little kids are sort of supposed to be pure and innocent. you know, anything about that is supposed to be sort of nice and good and sweet and pure and innocent all the time. When in reality, there is a lot of darkness and creepiness and weirdness about childhood that people kind of forget.
about.
Stephen (34:07)
Hannibal, what did you want to cover?
Hannah (34:08)
Yeah. ⁓ I just wanted to say,
just triggered a memory of a really good crime scene investigation serial killer who would make little dollhouse style dioramas of the crime scenes and then leave them to, to, it's like little breadcrumbs on the trail. that like corruption very down to some sort of like psychological core of, of these things that are supposed to be made by children and have an innocence. Just, yeah.
Leila (34:26)
Yes.
Stephen (34:39)
What I wondered if we could do with that is extend that to the idea that dark and that light doesn't stay just with children, it's carried through into adulthood. And what you describe Hannah as the gaze, the relationship of the home with the outside plays a role in policing that because there's definitely a correlation between the houses that have had really terrible things happen in them.
and the lack of observation. know, the Frank Lloyd Wright house, was it the Sowden House? Just the fact that it felt like a tomb and one of the actors saying, I don't think anybody would hear you call out or scream, and I've said, if you were in there and you just think, know, that's one of the worst things to, that's why I don't like going in some abandoned buildings because it's that sense that you don't exist anymore and you're not observed anymore.
Leila (35:11)
Mmm. Yeah.
Hannah (35:30)
Yeah.
Stephen (35:31)
And
when the home functions correctly, you get to exert some control over the observation. You can draw the curtains, you can pull the blinds.
You can let people through the front door or not as you choose. You don't have to answer the phone if you don't want to answer the phone. But there's so many both myths and true stories about houses that are not subject to that gaze for whatever reason, either because they're in the middle of nowhere or because the people within them have chosen to hide themselves.
Leila (36:01)
I mean, think that was so.
about the family that lived next door to us that had papered over their windows. What were they doing in there? Or the house next door to us that had, or down the street from us that had ⁓ painted the windows black, even though that was probably an abandoned building. But it's the reason why I find farmhouses or abandoned farmhouses so particularly kind of creepy sometimes on the prairie. I don't know if you've ever been out to the
⁓ heartland ⁓ of Kansas or in America where it's just, you can't see the tail of the horn, good, there you go. It's vast, so you know everything you need to know. The vast plains of kind of nothingness where there's nowhere to hide is kind of just as kind of creepy to me as a very sort of
Stephen (36:36)
I have seen Children of the Corn, however.
Hannah (36:38)
We've seen everything
we need to know.
Yeah.
Leila (36:59)
claustrophobic old Victorian house where there might be tons of nooks and crannies. I think it's almost scarier to have a vast empty plane where there's no trees, where there's no structures except that one creepy Texas Chainsaw Massacre house, you know, or Ed Gein's house in the middle of nowhere where there's no other options but that
Hannah (37:19)
Mmm.
Leila (37:27)
one scary house and there's nowhere to hide. You're just exposed. So I think there's ⁓ the two things where you're either inside and no one can see you or you're outside and there's nowhere to hide.
Stephen (37:31)
Mmm.
Hannah (37:44)
We have a bit of a, people often really desire to live in the countryside in the UK. And that idea of exposure and loneliness at the same time is exactly the reason why I don't want to live in the countryside. I'm very happy being mixed up with the masses. But that idea of...
of being that threat that you can kind of see coming because the long view you've got is so long. But what can you do about it? Because you're so alone. Very haunting.
Stephen (38:18)
Yeah, nobody's gonna get there. You can call the police if you like, but it's too late already when you see the people on the horizon.
Leila (38:23)
It's too late.
How?
Stephen (38:27)
So there's two extremes of home that are really unsettling for people then. One is the trap, one is the kind of the enclosed space, the place where nobody knows what's happening to you. And then there's the place where it's like a panopticon, you've got no defense against the outside world. So is it playing with the idea that there is some equilibrium there that we are searching for?
Leila (38:48)
Yeah.
And actually, so you mentioned the Panopticon. It just reminded me of something. Someone asked me at a reading once why I don't a prison or someone's prison cell a home. I once said that any place where I felt
Like I put something on the wall that I decorated, I would consider home. Like even if it was only three months, if I felt I was there long enough to make it mine, to kind of mark it as my space, I kind of felt it was home. And someone asked me, well, you you might be in prison and decorate yourself for a while. Why wouldn't that be home? And I said, because you can't leave it. It's not a home if you don't have any control over.
if you can come and go, if you're there by choice. You didn't choose to be there. You didn't pick that cell. You can't control if somebody comes in it or not. You have no privacy whether or not someone can see you. It has none of the other attributes of what we consider home, which is autonomy and security and warmth and control. It has none of that. So even if you do
Hannah (39:56)
Mm.
Leila (40:07)
mark it as yours, decorate it as yours, try to make it homey and home-like. still isn't home. So there may be spaces where you where people try to like make a house or a home into kind of like a cell where they're like trying to like keep the outside out. You know, I think
Hannah (40:30)
Mm.
Leila (40:32)
In the book I mentioned the ⁓ movie Dogtooth and I talk about like doomsday bunkers and things like that where there's this need, this pathological need to keep the outside world out. Like to me that's no longer a home in a lot of ways.
It's almost turning the house into something else, almost into something other than a home, into sort of a prison almost.
Stephen (41:01)
But if I were the reincarnation, I had been inhabited by the spirit of Jeremy Bentham, I would say to you that the prison is a panopticon because the people within it have ceded for the time being their trust and therefore need a level of observation that the rest of us would find unbearably oppressive because of their history of malfeasance. There's something going on here, isn't there, about
Leila (41:24)
No.
Stephen (41:29)
what happens when people are seen too much and when people are not seen at all and what role does that societal gaze on people have do you think in moderating their behaviour and perhaps tempering some of their darker impulses?
Leila (41:48)
Yeah, there's a, yeah, I can't help but think, I just keep thinking about Ed Gein and Ed Gein's house. Because on the outside, it looks super normal. It looks like any other kind of Midwest farmhouse. And not particularly shabby. It looks kind of normal. Or Texas Chainsaw Massacre House. It looks kind of normal. Maybe a little bit worn down. But.
because no one went inside, because everyone sort of passed it by, because no one came to visit after Ed Gein's mother died because it became kind of reclusive. You know, it's the psycho house. It's the Norman Bates house. Because no one else was invited into that space.
Hannah (42:29)
Mm.
Leila (42:38)
anyone in there is left to their own devices because no one is watching them and when no one is watching, know, bad, bad things happen to mother inside.
Stephen (42:41)
Mmm.
Hannah (59:56)
Hmm
absolutely fascinating what you said there, Leila, about prisons and small spaces and that sort of lack of of owning that space changes what it is to be a home. But when we were discussing this podcast, you told us a really fascinating account about a haunting that wasn't in the home. Could you could you please tell us that story? Because it was very good.
Leila (1:00:22)
Yeah, it's from a short story called The Importance a Tidy Home by Christopher Golden. takes place in Salzburg, and I think it's based on a folktale about these two men who are a home, and they are kind of wandering the streets. And it's
A few days after Christmas, I think it's like January 5th or something like that. And there is this spirit, these creatures in this folktale go around houses in the town. And I think they have these giant scissors, these big, giant sharp scissor like things. And they look for homes.
that are messy, that are not tidy. So they go in the homes and if they're messy, they kill the people inside the home and they like stab them with the scissors and they like murder all the people inside of the homes if they're messy. Then they go and they see another home and if that home is nice and clean and tidy, then they pass them by and they're safe and everything. So these two friends are, you know, they're in the streets and they're seeing these, these
tall spooky, you know, black cloaked creatures and they're getting kind of freaked out and they're like, we need to get off the streets. So they don't have homes, right? They're homeless. So one of the friends I know a place where we can crash or we can hide out a car. So they are kind of bundled up together and he's like, we can sleep here and we can hide here for the night. they get inside the car.
And his friend looks around and there's like, you know, there's like kind of blankets and stuff, cause you know, they've been staying in there and there's food wrappers and there's garbage and there's cups and there's like old books and there's, you know, balls of paper and there's everywhere. And he's looking around in his friend's car in this space that he's been crashing. And he realizes he's been living here, that he's been living in this car.
and then lo and behold, they see the dark cloaked creatures with the big gigantic scissors creeping up on them because he has not kept a tidy home, but his home is that car. and I just love the idea of they thought they were safe because they didn't have a quote unquote home the way they think of a home, but
But he was living there. That car was his home and he did not keep it tidy. Yes, still gonna be judged.
Hannah (1:03:07)
Yeah, you're still going to be judged. This is a this is a handed creatures are still going to judge
you. Yeah. Yeah. that touches upon that. Yeah. So they judge you and that that notion of I think, know, at home, you know, the homely feeling, you know, it's when it's there and when it isn't. And I had a thought through these conversations as well as like there was one property I
Leila (1:03:17)
Yeah, he's still... Yeah, they're still gonna tell you.
Hannah (1:03:34)
I lived in and I did all of the homemaking things and it never ever felt truly like home and it all just started with the location of the light switch in this property it was just incorrectly located for what I expected and after like after five years of living in that home it just I never could get used to where this light switch was but I could never get used to living in that place either it never felt like like a homely place
So, you know, it's interesting, you can do all of that work and follow that social script you're supposed to be following for homemaking. And there we have a tale of somebody who's gone off, off script, but they're still, they're still subject to that, are you homemaking effectively?
Stephen (1:04:21)
it's very interesting and particularly in...
in more Germanic cultures in Northern Europe, there's a real, you know, consistent association with violence and this conduct in the home thing. So you've got that particular story that you've told and there's kind of, there are folk creatures that exist in various European cultures that will punish you very brutally if you don't behave appropriately in various ways, but it often centers around the home. And it did make me think about the fact that we play with this idea
a lot because you talk about Ladybug in the book as well my mother used to sing that to me whenever a Ladybird appeared when I was a small child and I used to think why are you singing that to me it's horrible why are you telling me that this this beautiful creature why are you telling me that her house has burnt down and all her children are dead because that's not very satisfying
Leila (1:05:16)
Yeah, I think it's all about scaring kids. They're not, they're not, yeah, they're not all of these sort of fables and all of these nursery rhymes. Yeah, I think they're all meant to be warnings and cautionary tales that were kind of meant kids. And also I think a lot of them were maybe written at a time where life was maybe a little bit scarier.
Stephen (1:05:19)
Yeah.
Leila (1:05:41)
a little bit messier than they are now. ⁓ You know, sort of thinking about the Hansel and Gretel, you know, and the idea that they would, you know, kick their children out because they couldn't afford to feed them so the mom and dad would throw them out into the forest to fend for themselves. That happened. You know I mean? Like for us, it was like this weird fairy tale. We're like...
Stephen (1:05:44)
Hmm.
Leila (1:06:09)
why would they do that? That's a strange thing to happen in the story when ⁓ that kind of happened in real life. Yeah. ⁓
Stephen (1:06:14)
And it's that, yeah, the darkness of play perhaps, isn't it? Again, it's a bit
like making a movie about Karen Carpenter using a Barbie doll. It's very, very unnerving, but then the story is very, very unnerving.
Leila (1:06:23)
Yes!
Very unnerving yeah.
Hannah (42:50)
You just.
Stephen (42:51)
Hahaha
Hannah (42:53)
There's something there
I think about a house of horrors versus a haunted house. And I forget, I meant to look it up earlier, but I forgot, I'll own that. ⁓ There's a quotation I use from your book about how the haunted house is one that you can't escape the observation. The possession is, you feel constantly observed. So that I wonder if there's some distinction there. You the house of horror, unobserved terrors go on in the haunted house. ⁓
It's that you can't escape. You just don't know when it's going to happen because you can't see back, but the haunting can see you.
Leila (43:31)
Yeah, that's the thing that always continually creeps, I creep myself out sometimes when I write about these things. Because the thing that always moves me about a haunting is the idea that a haunted house where a ghost, whatever it is, knows more about you than you know about it. You know nothing about the...
Hannah (43:38)
Yeah.
Mm.
Leila (43:59)
ghost or whatever is haunting your house. But that thing knows everything about you and it sees you when you're most vulnerable. You know, it sees you in the shower, when you're asleep, when you're in the bathroom.
Hannah (44:05)
Mm.
Leila (44:13)
It has complete access to you at all times and you have no knowledge of it. It is the ultimate invasion of privacy. See, I'm freaking myself out
Stephen (44:27)
It's one step up
the scale from having your mother to stay, it, for a period of time? there's, know... But no, I mean, I'm semi-serious because there is a psychological tension between mothers and their children because you know too much about each other's psychology and that is something that is perfectly natural in that relationship but it's not always a happy thing.
Leila (44:31)
Right?
Mm-hmm. totally.
yeah.
No, no, no. ⁓
Hannah (44:53)
can feel a poll coming out, yeah.
Stephen (44:54)
And that kind
sort of inward looking nature of families. I mean you've alluded to it already Leila because you've talked about dog tooth and Hannah and I have discussed ⁓
the threat that we feel exists to the public dimension of home. And I say that because it's a controlled thing. It's not full public exposure, but it's the nature of home beyond the boundaries of the home or the car. It's the interactions with the outside.
create community but also we've touched on the idea that they might be quite important behaviourally and we observe certainly in Western countries an increasing tendency towards the atomisation centring around the nuclear family and that people are turning their backs more and more on
the neighbourhood and communal experience, which is very reminiscent of some of those bunker films or film like Dog Tooth. There's something going on there which feels corrosive, which feels dangerous. That's not to say that families that doing that are doing anything wrong or anything that we should be concerned about.
but it might increase the chance of it. And even if it doesn't do that, it's decaying somehow what home is.
Hannah (46:15)
Well, there's an anxiety
that's sort of being intentionally built up by this sort of desire to protect, but shrinking down. We've talked before about, you know, the children's roaming, you know, back in the 60s, 70s, they could roam for miles. Now they can barely roam to the end of the street. So here we are talking about hauntings. What is this fear that I think we're trying to allude to, where people are bunkering down to some external
fear that's just as intangible as the poltergeist, you know?
Leila (46:50)
Yeah, I mean, think that's kind of, I think that's kind of the biggest thing that's going on right now. Here is our biggest, I was gonna say commodity, is fear. So much of our legislation, so much of our, you know, sort of social decisions, so much of our economy is based on illogical fears.
of things that are not actual real threats. And so much of what we are kind of working against in our sort of day-to-day lives are working against irrational fears. And I think that's why I think sort of Get Out was so brilliant. Jordan Peele's Get Out was so brilliant. It's taking a look at what
Hannah (47:43)
Mm.
Leila (47:46)
fear and what social fear has sort of actually done in our world, you know, but I think there's, and I think when things were missing and I'm like, I'm glad that you mentioned kids roaming, you know, I feel like that was a very like eighties movies thing with like kids kind of just getting on their bikes and exploring and having adventures. Is there kind of missing? Yeah, we're missing kind of whimsical fear.
Hannah (48:08)
It's very Stephen King.
Leila (48:16)
for missing play, fear, you know what I mean? Because there is, one of the things that I love about horror and the gothic is the idea that ⁓ horror can be fun. And the idea that being safely afraid of being ⁓ afraid, knowing that you're gonna be okay on the other side is that's the best part of horror is that you're gonna come out on the other side.
But when your day-to-day is bombarded by real fear, by real actual fear, that's hard. It's hard to find the play in that.
Stephen (48:56)
And that feels like we're in quite an interesting place, doesn't it really? Because on the one hand, there's an attempt to sanitise childhood and control it to the point that there is no risk, there is no fear, which ironically may result in more fear. But we're also in society where, you know, beyond the tradition of fiction and horror movies, ⁓
Leila (49:06)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Stephen (49:20)
that we've experienced a mass monetization of fear and loathing, is the engine that social media appears to run on. And does that just exhaust people's capacity to gauge and manage fear?
Leila (49:24)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, totally.
yeah. I mean, I don't know if this is getting too off topic or not, but I was reading something about how people were ⁓ like kids or younger people were afraid to dance, like going to concerts or going to a or something, and were afraid to dance to music because they were afraid of looking dumb and being recorded and people on their phones, like recording them and posting them. ⁓
Hannah (50:00)
Yeah.
Leila (50:05)
And I was like, that's really depressing. That is so depressing to me to be afraid of looking dumb. So you can't just have fun at a show and dance and just look, you can't be afraid to look stupid because you're afraid of being posted, you know, being looking dumb online.
Hannah (50:25)
Well, it's you've hit on a topic that
means Stephen talk about a fair bit because I've taken up sort of like freestyle jazz dancing in my own time. Stephen will be sick of me mentioning it, but he did send the YouTube of Telly Savalas Does Birmingham where there was a plus 40s dance competition. So there is something there's something about Birmingham. And I get it.
Leila (50:45)
That was amazing. That was amazing. That was amazing. That was
Stephen (50:46)
⁓ I loved that, I loved that! That was great!
Leila (50:54)
amazing. That was amazing.
Hannah (50:55)
I was just
thinking, what is it about this city? But then there was the shot of the market with the road going across. I thought it's actually lead poisoning more than anything else. I think the city might be haunted by a long legacy of lead poisoning. But there is something there, isn't there, of like, you know, if we internalize that external...
Leila (51:02)
Someone loves you, baby. Sorry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hannah (51:18)
So we're policing ourselves so much that so we can't even joyfully let ourselves go. And I can tell you the dance stuff I do, we're all over 40. We're trying to get the young ones in. And then when we try and talk to other people about it, they're like, can you show us some recordings of it? And we're like, what happens at our dance event stays at our dance event. And there is that weird like, it would make it unsettling.
Stephen (51:41)
You
Leila (51:42)
I know, right? Yeah.
Yeah.
Hannah (51:47)
having the wrong gaze.
Leila (51:49)
Yeah, it's this really strange self-surveillance. It's surveilling when you don't need to be surveilled. It's pre-surveillance. When you're already going to be surveilled, whether you want to or not, it's, to be surveilled.
Hannah (52:09)
another poll idea to compliment Stephen's would you prefer to be haunted or have your mother around? It's like, would you prefer to go viral doing a bad dance on YouTube or would you prefer to have a poltergeist? I would really like to know what people's answers to that would actually be. Yeah.
Leila (52:18)
Yeah.
I would rather have a poltergeist. I would like to experience a poltergeist.
Hannah (52:34)
I'm with you on that, I'd prefer a poltergeist. Any thoughts Stephen?
Leila (52:34)
Yeah. Yeah, I think...
Stephen (52:38)
You do describe one thing in your book which is quasi-poltergeist-y. ⁓ It's not the poltergeist version of poltergeist. There's not cupboard doors opening and closing and slamming but there was some weird stuff going on that was quite gentle. Yeah.
Hannah (52:38)
Yeah
Leila (52:43)
Mm.
The dust.
Hannah (52:55)
Yes.
Leila (52:56)
Yeah, Yeah, it's interesting because I think when people think about a haunting or a ghost story or something, they think of something that's really obvious or something that they've seen in movies. And a lot of it is cupboards opening and closing and, you know, or windows opening.
Stephen (53:18)
Because the set designers can
accommodate that mechanically, I suspect.
Leila (53:21)
Exactly, exactly. ⁓
I think, I mean, one of the reasons, the thing I like about the definition of, you know, of unheimlich or something or the unhomie or something, it's something we're used to, essentially something that we're used to existing being different. It's just something that we're used to as being unusual happening and something that we're...
something that's comfortable is suddenly uncomfortable. It doesn't have to be a big change. So I came home from work one day and there was a pile of dust, as if you had, you know, did some sweeping and, know, like, I don't know, I can't remember maybe like three inches in diameter in the middle of my kitchen floor. And there was no indication of where it could have
fallen from or where it could have seeped through and no one else had keys to my apartment. There was just this strange mound of debris that materialized in the middle of my kitchen floor It was strange, but not bad. It was just sort of like I swept it up and I put it away and next day came home from work.
And it was back. The mound of debris was back in the middle of my kitchen. And I kind of stood there in this strange, like, ⁓ awe moment of... I knew that something very strange was happening, but it was so banal. It was so banal.
that I didn't know what to do with it in my brain. So I kind of swept it up again and put it in the bin. ⁓ I'm doing a very short version of this because the rest of it is in the book, but spoiler day three, come home from work, there's another mound only it's a little bit smaller.
Hannah (55:11)
Mm.
Leila (55:32)
It was so weird, but it wasn't violent. It wasn't anything that I would have expected a haunting to be. It was a ghost behavior that I've ever seen in any kind of movie. It was just oddly materialized mounds of dirt. And I kept thinking, well, maybe it's a mouse or a rat that's kind of gone crazy.
and decided to start building nests in the middle of my brightly lit kitchen. I didn't know. But it was one of those where I like, knew that something weird was going on. I just had no explanation for it.
Stephen (56:16)
But the way you describe
it, there's a really palpable sense of gentleness in it. And I found that really interesting because, you know, whatever we're talking about here, who knows? But were it to be a poltergeist in the sense that most people would understand the word, they don't really have a reputation for sweeping up.
Hannah (56:36)
you
Leila (56:37)
Right? Right? Right?
Stephen (56:37)
for one right but also but also there's a like a little
gentle possibly even slightly passive aggressive battle of wills going on here it's like when you when you when you live with somebody and you slightly disagree about where something should be and you go downstairs in the morning and it's moved again
Leila (56:45)
Right.
I it.
Stephen (56:55)
It's
gradually, you move it back, gradually it resolves itself one way or another, because somebody will just give up and say it's not that important. And it felt in your story as though this kind of attrition process, because the pile was getting smaller, it was almost like, I'm getting a bit half-hearted about this now, I'm going to make my point, and you're obviously very keen to deal with this and I'm eventually just going to say, fine. ⁓
Leila (57:09)
hate it.
Yeah.
It was so strange. And then it just kind of, you know.
Hannah (57:24)
like a poltergeist looking for a home just like
doing a little test run how are they gonna behave with this or a poltergeist who's got the brush but doesn't have the dustpan and it's just going can you help me out here can you buy a dustpan so we can finish this job together yeah that was
Leila (57:33)
gonna do it.
Maybe. Maybe.
So
I was doing the work. I was cleaning up after this poltergeist. Is that what we're talking about? Lazy poltergeist. Yeah, it was so, it was one of those things where was like, don't know how, I didn't know where in my brain to put this experience. Because if a book had flown across my living room, I could say, that's a ghost. That was clearly like, I have a ghost.
Hannah (57:47)
Yeah.
Leila (58:11)
You know, I've seen this in movies. ⁓ I've never seen this in a movie. ⁓
Hannah (58:17)
It's touching
upon the story of the tenant I interviewed and that sort of gentle haunting by the deceased husband of like, know, why are you out to play about with the electricity, electrics of the washing machine? I've got absolutely no idea. But it's that inexplicable twitch in the brain.
And the home is already a space of some uncertainty. I just love how there's this extra dimension, because we often talk in the podcast of the desire to rational and organize the home versus the messy reality of it. But this is the third dimension here of just sort of random uncanniness.
Leila (58:57)
I do love the idea of some kind of connection or some kind of spirit or kind of using whatever energy they can, whatever kind of means they have in the home of using that. I mean, we haven't really talked about what we think a ghost is, because I don't know.
honestly, I don't presume to know what it is. ⁓ yeah, I kind of, if it's electricity, you're going to use it. ⁓
Hannah (59:27)
I'm slightly spooked about trying to talk about it as well. Yeah, there's a little bit of like, it's that
little tickle in the brain of like, you know, we're all in the, I mean, you're in your office, me and Stephen are in our homes. And I'm like, ooh, I don't really want to talk about what a home haunting might be in case I bring it upon myself. And it's like, how much of that is just culturally imposed from watching way too many horror films and how much of it is just that?
Leila (59:52)
⁓
Stephen (1:06:31)
Well, thank you ever so much, Leila, for joining us. It's been a great pleasure talking to you about some of these ideas, most of which we've based on the detailed and very enchanting, I have to say, analysis in your book, Sick Houses, Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread. And we'll put full details of that publication in the show notes. But that's not the full extent of your work, Leila. How can people find out you and what you do?
Leila (1:06:58)
This was great. I really enjoyed this. Thank you so much for having me. I'm on Instagram. I'm on Blue Sky. I often talks, lectures, things like anything that I happen to be doing, I do things for an organization called Morbid Anatomy. And often I'll put that online and you can find some of my talks on it'll be probably on Instagram and you can find the link.
on there and Blue Sky. And that's where you can find what I'm doing
Hannah (1:07:29)
I have to say Leila has got like the coolest job in the world as well. So make sure you check her out because I was just reading what about you and I'm like, my God, this is just like the best job ever. So thank you so much for coming on. I so enjoyed this book and it's been a great joy to be able to talk to you and unpack some of the deeper ideas that lay within this work. So the joy of our podcast, Stephen, I'm really, really glad.
Leila (1:07:36)
Ha
Hannah (1:07:58)
the opportunities to really talk to people about these ideas. Yeah, we are.
Stephen (1:08:00)
I know, we're very lucky.
Leila (1:08:03)
Thank you. And happy Halloween.
Hannah (1:08:05)
Happy Halloween!
Stephen (1:08:06)
Yes
indeed, yeah nice to get ready.
Hannah (1:08:07)
I'm gonna get kids at my door now offering me sugary snacks which all... It happens in reverse here, probably because I am the witch in this block of flats. Kids bring me sweets, I don't give them sweets. Something's going on there, isn't there? I'm not complaining.
Leila (1:08:14)
Ha
Nice.
Stephen (1:08:25)
They're
testing you. They want to find out what you're going to do.
Hannah (1:08:28)
Ha ⁓
Stephen (1:08:33)
Yes!
That's just where we fade out to some spooky music I think. So yeah, thank you. Thank you again.
Leila (1:08:41)
life.
Hannah (1:08:41)
Yeah, I
Yeah, really glad you... yeah, yeah, Stephen does magic in the
Leila (1:08:46)
I hope you got I it was good. Okay. Okay, good.