In the Hunt: Unauthorized Essays on Supernatural

by Supernatural. tv,

  Jamie Chambers gives us the lowdown on hunting evil on the cheap, demonstrating how financial backing, legitimate authority, or inherited superpowers are no match for detailed knowledge of the supernatural world, creative thinking, and good old-fashioned Winchester ingenuity.

  JAMIE CHAMBERS

  BLUE COLLAR GHOST HUNTERS

  Flip on the television, head off to the movies, or open up a comic book. You’ll see ghosts aplenty, monsters hiding behind every bush, and more evil than you can shake a stick at. Those that battle such terrors are inevitably endowed with superpowers, expensive high-tech gadgets, or an arsenal worthy of the legions of Hell. The conflicts in each of these tales are challenging, but you don’t exactly see Everyman hunting dark forces in most pop culture stories. There seems to be an unwritten assumption that Everyman would get his ass handed to him.

  Who you gonna call? The Ghostbusters were a for-profit corporation founded by three guys who each sported PhDs and came from cushy, grant-funded research studies at a major university. Mulder and Scully had the authority and resources of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, with an expense account, sidearms, and cell phones. Buffy Summers inherited superpowers and the insight of an ancient feminine legacy-one that even came with a snooty British guy who had most of the answers. Hell, even poor ol’ Carl Kolchak had a steady job and a press pass.

  The Brothers Winchester are playing in a high-stakes game where the deck is stacked against them and the dealer wants to rip out their soft and squishy parts. Sam and Dean aren’t sporting proton packs. They have no superpowers to speak of (save a few unreliable incidents for Sam, and he can’t count on them to even pick up a bar tab). There’s no legal authority to back them up. Now, the boys do sport guns, law enforcement IDs, and high-limit credit cards. Too bad it’s all about as legal as driving home after the fifth beer.

  Hunting ain’t exactly a pro-ball career. You’re way more likely to end up shoving daisies through the topsoil than rolling around on mattresses covered in Benjamins. Normal people don’t have any business trying to take up the life, and just eating a bullet is far quicker and less painful than what might happen to you during a hunt. Each man or woman who walks away from their nine-to-fives and mortgage payments to stake zombies and burn bones-even the random roughnecks polishing their Remingtons in Harvelle’s Roadhouse-has a powerful motivation driving them down that lonely road. A hunter is risking life, limb, and a ten to twenty-five stint in a 9 x 5 cell to walk into the darkness and make it just a tiny bit safer.

  Somewhere in the world there might be a rich hunter, the Supernatural equivalent of Richard Dreyfuss’s character in Jaws. It might be interesting to see what such an independently rich person might do to make his or her mark on a dark world filled with angry spirits and the unquiet dead … but I somehow suspect it would be less compelling than seeing the Winchester brothers get by using what little they have.

  A LITTLE HISTORY

  The Winchesters were never swimming in loot. They didn’t look desperately poor when we first saw them (at a point where Dean was a year shy of kindergarten and little Sammy was still sucking formula from a bottle) but they did look like they were scraping out the bottom end of middle class. It seemed likely they inherited the split-level home rather than mortgaged it on John’s wages.

  The senior Winchester was no moron, but it could be that he never earned so much as a G.E.D. The pictures and medals of his Vietnam days in the Marines showed him as a rifleman, and those with high school degrees were often sent to aviation or communications schools. After serving his country (and receiving a USMC Expert Rifle Badge, a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and Vietnam Service Medal in the process) he ended up working as a mechanic. Mary appeared to be a housewife and stay-at-home mom, taking good care of her sons but not letting them enjoy the kind of excess that the ’80s were known for.

  After the fire, John must have taken the insurance money and sold the property before hitting the road. He would have known it could only go so far, so stretched it out by living light. Roadside motels, greasy diners, and cheap beer were the order of the day for John.

  But after a time his resources would have run out. Savings, loans, credit cards, personal possessions sold-it wouldn’t have been enough to buy silver for the bullets, keep gas in the Impala, and pay for chicken wings at the local greasy spoon. But John Winchester was on a mission-to find and put down whatever it was that killed the love of his life and mother of his sons-and he wasn’t about to stop long enough to find his fortune. Time to start taking other’s people’s fortunes. Stealing sounds ugly, but there are ways to buy ammo and supplies without having to knock over 7-Elevens.

  Identity theft wasn’t a buzzword back when John Winchester began the practice. Before the information age, you had to dumpster-dive for credit card carbons, steal cards, find the social security numbers of the invalid rich or the recently deceased, lie your ass off on a regular basis, and engage in some good ol’ fashioned breaking and entering. John wasn’t out to hurt any regular folk, he probably figured if those he robbed had a clue about the kinds of horrors he sent back to Hell they’d be scratching out thank-you notes.

  These were important skills to pass on to the next generation, and so the boys learned how to steal badges from drunk off-duty cops, create fake IDs, design bogus business cards for nonexistent insurance companies, and do other things that would help them get where they needed to go in order to get the job done. One can’t help but wonder how Sam felt much later as a pre-law student, learning just how many lifetimes in jail they could spend for every crime they’d committed over the years. It probably gave him pause, but not enough to stop him from going back to the life once he had strong enough reasons of his own.

  How to survive without a job in a life of digging up graves and breaking into abandoned buildings wasn’t the only thing John taught his sons. Their old man also instructed them on how to get the job done on a reasonable budget.

  HUNTING ON THE CHEAP

  Leave it to people named Winston and Egon to haul around expensive equipment and find scientific solutions to their problems. Supernatural is steeped in folklore-as in the “lore” of “folks,” which doesn’t exactly inspire images of lifestyles of the rich and fabulous. In the legends of old, people had to look to whatever herbs, roots, prayers, and traditions they had on-hand when bloodsuckers, pissed-off spirits, or other nasties set up shop. Add in some Yankee ingenuity, improvisation, and desperation, and it all leads to a supernatural formula.

  It’s from this fine tradition that the show gets its decidedly low-rent, old-school solutions to the problem that scare the hell out of us each week. Here are a few pages out of the Winchester playbook-all of the savings without having to clip a single coupon.

  AVOID BIG PURCHASES

  The easiest way to get your stolen (or falsely issued) credit cards noticed is to start buying big-ticket items. The red flags go up, the cops show up, you go to jail, and the spook/monster keeps on killing while you make nice with an over-friendly cellmate.

  Dean loves his car, and would flip off anyone who suggested that he trade in his classic ride for something a little more fuel-efficient. But aside from the Impala’s tendency to gas-guzzle, she’s pretty cost-efficient; Dean wisely handles the upkeep and maintenance on his own (using the skills taught by his pro-mechanic dad). It’s one thing to buy a new shotgun with a credit card bearing the name of Hector Aframian, another thing entirely to get yourself a new set of wheels with it.

  Open the car’s trunk, THEN pull up the hidden paneling, and you’ll see a collection of guns, blades, and what may well be instruments of torture-enough to supply a whole S&M club with a full evening’s enjoyment. Stolen, unregistered, or fraudulently acquired firearms let the Winchesters stay one step ahead of the law in an age of forensic criminalists and CSI reruns. Gunsmithing kits let the boys fix up their own weapons and cast their own silver bullets to take out werewolves and assorted shapeshifters. The machetes, bowie knives, and switch-
blades are available for the critters that need more up-close-and-personal action. There’s also a collection of knick-knacks, from crucifixes to hoodoo charms, to deal with demons and restless spirits.

  Watch any ghost-tracking reality show and you’ll see them haul around a utility van full of equipment. Cameras, video recorders, motion detectors, infrared imagers, and a host of other crap is set up all over a site for a period of hours to document the whole event. Each person carries a digital recorder for electronic voice phenomenon (EVP), along with a clunky gadget to record electromagnetic frequencies (an EMF detector; Dean has one of these, but he made his out of a busted-up old Walkman).

  Not only is most of this junk spectacularly ineffective in tracking and dealing with ghosts, it draws attention and slows you down. The cops have a tendency to notice guys hauling a couple of mortgages’ worth of electronic gear into an old house-and if you need to bail you might find yourself having to abandon your investment. Also, poltergeists aren’t known to be friendly to delicate electronic gadgets, just so you know.

  LEARN YOUR SYMBOLS

  One of the cheapest, simplest things Dean ever did to hold off a creature was draw in the dirt. Okay, he traced Anasazi symbols in the earth to create a circle of protection against the Wendigo. But he did it with a stick.

  Stick? Zero dollars. Dirt? Zero dollars and zero cents. Not becoming a freakish cannibal’s winter snack? Priceless.

  There are plenty of symbols that can be used for various purposes, from summoning to banishing to protecting and everything in between. Most of them don’t require much more than a piece of chalk-though certain summoning circles and other pieces of business require some lit candles, maybe a little incense, or some burning herbs.

  If you think you’re going to be dealing with demons at any point, you might want to get familiar with a complicated doodle known as a devil’s trap. Taken from the Lesser Key of Solomon, it’s a pretty potent demon-catcher with plenty of bang for your buck. If you can lure a demon into the circle you’ve pretty much got it right where you want it. (Just hope it’s not powerful enough to break the circle without touching it.) Once you’ve got a demon trapped you can perform an exorcism with impunity, and you might even be able to save the poor sucker it’s possessed.

  There’s also a symbol used by Tibetan monks that can be used to manifest a creature from pure thought and belief, known as a Tulpa. This is not easily accomplished, and it’s an incredibly dangerous thing to screw around with, so it’s best to understand the symbol so you can wipe it out before it gets any real use.

  If you’re really educated, you might begin to recognize pictographs and symbols used in witchcraft or rituals from long-lost cultures. It’s useful on a hunt, but that kind of education takes years and it ain’t cheap.

  SALT IS YOUR FRIEND

  Salt has enjoyed a special place in human history, a fact that’s largely lost on those who use it mostly to season French fries or de-ice sidewalks. But along with fire and the wheel, salt is one of the most important tools for human survival. It was one of the few ways to preserve meat back in the days before freezers and canning. It has been used as currency and as a symbol of both hospitality and fortune-which is why it’s bad luck to spill salt and a good idea to toss it over your shoulder if you do (hey, you never know what might be sneaking up behind you).

  The purity of salt repels unnatural things, including angry spirits and demons. Block the doors and windows with salt and you might earn yourself a good night’s sleep or at the very least enough time to plan your next move. Surround yourself with a ring of salt if you’re somewhere unsafe, and you might well live to see the next morning-just don’t be stupid enough to break the circle or step outside of it.

  Rock salt rounds aren’t just for riot control anymore. Just as the ring of salt keeps the spirit out of your room, a blast of the pure substance might be just enough to disperse it or drive it back when it’s trying to put its icy fingers around your heart. It would be naïve to think you’re killing a ghost or even hurting it with the salt rounds, but you are pulling your bacon out of the fire long enough to plan your next move.

  As satisfying as shooting a spook in the face might be, one of the sure-fire (pun intended) ways of dealing with the situation permanently is to salt and burn the bones. The purity of the salt combined with the destructive force of the fire is enough to break the spiritual anchor that lets the angry ghost hang around and cause trouble. Finding out just where some poor bastard was buried, digging up an old grave, and then torching some freshly salted bones is a giant pain in the ass-but it does the trick to be sure, and without breaking the bank. You have to wonder, though, how do Sam and Dean dig such perfectly rectangular graves with hand-shovels?

  START FIRES

  We touched on fire in relation to salt and burning bones, above, and the salt/fire combo is enough reason to keep any good hunter stocked with a gas can and some lighter fluid. But above and beyond that, fire can be its own solution.

  Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character had it all figured out in The Grudge. Ghost can’t haunt a house if there’s no house left to haunt-though that bitch of a ghost didn’t let her finish the job. She should have salted and burned the bones instead of the house. Oh well. It worked well enough for Sam and Dean on the Hell House in Texas.

  Some monsters are just asking to get lit up. Wendigos, for one, are ready to go up like dry kindling soaked in kerosene-assuming you can get a good shot at them. One well-placed flare gunshot to the chest and all you’ll need is a pack of marshmallows. Curse-crazed bugs aren’t too crazy about fire, either, nor are other animal-like critters. And fire will usually hurt even what it can’t kill.

  Lesson for hunters? Keep matches, lighters, sterno packs, and other sources of easy flame within easy reach. Fire is always a good, inexpensive plan B.

  CROSSES, STAKES, AND OL’ TIME RELIGION

  Dis the classics all you want; they’re in all the legends for a reason. Even if the stories don’t always get it right, there are plenty of uses for crosses, holy water, stakes, and a few well-spoken Latin phrases.

  Some of the exorcism rituals may take a little digging and some time in musty college libraries and used bookstores, but just about everything else can be found with ease. Keep a rosary and the correct ritual handy and you can turn a bathroom sink or even the steam pipes of an old factory into a makeshift font of holy water.

  Holy water, by the way, is a must. You may want to keep a nearby flask of Jim Beam handy, but the smart hunter will fill it with holy water. A simple splash will tell you if the guy in front of you is possessed, and its judicious use is important in most of the Catholic-tradition exorcisms. If you don’t know how to make your own, discreetly visit nearby churches to fill up before your next hunt.

  A crucifix doesn’t work the way you expect from television shows, but a well-brandished holy symbol can still hold many unclean things at bay-especially when you have the faith to back it up. Just don’t expect it to work so well on vampires, because on Fangs it’s just about as useless as …

  Wooden stakes. Not so useful for vampires (who require decapitation to be sure), but often the first order of business when dealing with special entities from the Old World (Europe, for those who didn’t benefit from higher education). Tricksters can be destroyed by wooden stakes dipped in the blood of at least one of their victims. Certain pagan gods can be taken out by an evergreen stake (or even the pointy end of a Christmas tree, if you’re desperate). Zombies need to be nailed back into their own graves, which is even more of a pain in the ass than burning bones, and stakes will usually do the trick.

  DESPERATION IS THE MOTHER OF IMPROVISATION

  The Christmas tree says it all. You’ll never have everything you need right when you need it, but look around, you might be able to find something that will do. It may not work, but it’s sure better than checking out without a fight.

  Need a flamethrower? Grab a can of hairspray-or just about anything else with some kind o
f propellant-grab your gas-station lighter, and burn away. Need to blow up a cursed house? Turn on the gas and then make a homemade fuse with a pack of matches and a lit cigarette. You can make a lot of fire with just a couple of smart moves.

  A hunter may not always have the right weapon when he needs it. Stuck in a bank with a psychotic shapeshifter? A silver letter opener may not be as comforting as a revolver loaded with silver rounds, but it’ll get the job done-just as long as you have the stones to go toe-to-toe with an evil sunuvabitch.

  Ghosts are often tied to their physical remains-which is where the whole burning the bones thing comes in-but sometimes the object that binds them to the world is something else. Could be anything: doll using the deceased’s hair, a prosthetic that was never fully destroyed, a mirror that a victim stared in at the moment of death. Whatever it is, get rid of it and you’ll send the damn thing back to Hell.

  Sometimes you just have to break stuff (see mirror, above). You’ll have to kick in your share of doors as a hunter, but this goes beyond that. Witches, cultists, and morons who picked up the wrong book may craft some talisman, altar, or satanic cross that lets them control a spirit or monster. These bozos think they’re in control, but I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that they’re living on borrowed time. Spirits, monsters, and demons don’t like to be controlled, and the moment you smash the mystical doodad to bits the one who’s been calling the shots is the first target.

  Technology can sometimes be your friend in unexpected ways. Some spirits that are invisible to the human eye can be picked up on certain kinds of cameras, like the ones found in a cell phone. Video cameras can pick up the strange flash of a shapeshifter’s eyes. And phones, tape recorders, and the like can sometimes grab little supernatural bits of dialogue called EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). Look for whatever might come in handy and grab it. Just don’t get caught if it’s hot merchandise.

  HITTING THE ROAD

  This doesn’t even come close to being a comprehensive guide to hunting the supernatural without a trust fund to back you up, but it’s a start. Travel light and fast, be flexible, and don’t get busted. Be ready to think on your feet and use whatever you have on-hand wherever you are.