Illustration by Caroline Villard
BUNGALOW’S FIRST SERIES OF STORIES is about myths and legends. Over the coming weeks, we'll be publishing four strange true stories, reported in depth, that are as haunting as this moment on earth deserves.
A penguin drops a stone at the feet of another penguin. Behind a rock in the Antarctic tundra, a man watches what happens next. What he sees is so shocking that he documents it in code, and suppresses the details for more than 100 years.
A teenaged boy sits in front of his computer, fear coursing through his veins, and writes a message on the very early internet that will create the first viral panic of the computer era. It will prompt hordes to buy canned food and build bunkers, cost trillions of dollars, begin and end religions, and set Bill Gates against his own government.
A band on the cusp of superstardom records for one pivotal night in a London studio with Timbaland, Justin Timberlake and Duran Duran, faced with whether to sell their souls for all they've ever dreamed of, or retain their integrity.
Two women walk through a forest famed for its mythical history. In the distance, they see a sight that chills their blood: a ghostly, ancient figure squatting on a rock. One of them snaps a photo. Investigating what they saw leads to one of the greatest horrors of the modern world.
The stories span a time range from 1912 to right now. They began with idle Googling, or a little news story, or a question we could not get out of our minds. But they turned out as the kinds of tales that could have been written a thousand years ago, if you changed a few details, or painted on a cave wall if you changed a few more.
They're partly inspired by Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, a psychological study on the appeal of fairytales. (I'm aware that Bettelheim and his life are a dystopian fairytale in themselves, but that's for another day.) That book makes the argument that fairytales are vital for living. Because huge stories, ones that contain both horror and magic, show us something of what it is to be human, and help us empathise with others we might ordinarily dismiss.
Bettelheim quotes the German poet Friedrich Schiller. “Deeper meaning," he wrote, "resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life.” It was a dilemma that Schiller took to his grave in 1805: meaningful stories, or true ones. He'd have been thrilled to know that we've now resolved it, and I'm sure he would have subscribed immediately. ⸭
RAVI SOMAIYA is Bungalow’s founder. You can email him here.