The following essay is reproduced with permission. 
The Conversation is an online publication covering the latest research.
In one of the most haunting scenes from Stephen King’s 1975 novel “Salem’s Lot,” a gravedigger named Mike Ryerson rushes to bury the coffin of a local boy named Danny Glick. I’m here. As night approaches, Mike is struck by disturbing thoughts. It was about Danny being buried with his eyes open. To make matters worse, Mike notices Danny staring at him through a closed casket.
Mania overcomes Mike. A prayer runs through his head: “Things like that will happen for no reason.” More disturbing thoughts invade. “Now I bring you rotten meat and stinking meat.” Mike jumps into the hole he has dug and furiously shovels the dirt out of the coffin. The reader knows what he’s going to do, but he also knows what not to do next. Mike opens the casket and frees Danny from whatever he has become.
About supporting science journalism
If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting our award-winning journalism. Currently subscribing. By subscribing, you help ensure future generations of influential stories about the discoveries and ideas that shape the world today.
Enter the pauper’s will for whipping. Some of them, King writes, “began to make shrill cries,” a call for violence that gave the species its name: “whip-poor-will.”
This is not the first time that “Whippy Will” appears in “Salem’s Lot,” nor is it the last time King invokes them in his work. However, despite the importance of this species to King, the Whip Pauper never appears in the film or television version of “Salem’s Lot.”
The latest installment of “Salem’s Lot,” released on October 3, 2024, incorporates bird songs, but they are largely underutilized. You can hear the cries of American crows and blue jays here and there. Their sparrow-like chirps color the night scene. And when Mike buries the undead Danny, instead of a whiplash testament, we hear a less threatening owl hoot.
As a cultural sociologist writing a book about the Eastern Whip-Poor Testament, this omission interests me not because it reflects an inauthentic recreation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s novel. Rather, I see the erasure of the Will of the Whip from the “Salem Lot” as a symptom of a broader ecological change in which the loss of species is also tied to the loss of culture.
night terror
The cry of the muchipua will, a nocturnal member of the nightjar family, has haunted American fiction since at least the time of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Perhaps the best-known whiplash suicide note in American horror appears in HP Lovecraft’s novella The Dunwich Terror. Lovecraft mentions this species nearly 20 times in his stories, and the bird appears frequently before and after the death of the Whateley family in the fictional town of Dunwich, Massachusetts.
The Dunwich nightjars symbolize the terror that the Whatley family unleashes on the townspeople by doing things that real poor people would never do. Birds also serve as psychopomps, guiding the souls of the newly deceased to the afterlife.
Dunwich’s flogging suicide note remains in town until Halloween – “unnaturally delayed,” Lovecraft wrote – and they chant it over the dying breaths of the Whately family. (In fact, most Whiplash testators leave the North East by the end of September, and usually never tune in.) But although Whiplash testaments are essential to the plot of ‘The Dunwich Horror’ , there is another thing in common. The owl, which is a great horned owl, appears in place of Whipping Testament in the 1970 film adaptation of Lovecraft’s story.
Dr. King also uses the will of the whip very effectively. In the short story “Jerusalem’s Lot,” which King later published as a prelude to “Salem’s Lot,” the will of a whip-poor haunts a town in Maine. And in his 1989 novel The Dark Half, King refers to the legend of the Whip-poor Will as a psychopomp.
Lovecraft and Martin Luther King Jr.’s fictional Whipping Testament is based on beliefs about the species that are widespread among Native Americans, Europeans, and Americans. The singing of a whipping will near a house was a particularly ominous omen, and usually meant that death would soon arrive in that house. An 1892 article in the American Journal of Folklore documents this belief in Dr. King’s home state of Maine. Possibly false stories are also offered as evidence. “A whippoorwill sang repeatedly at the back door. Eventually, the woman’s son died and was brought home, and the body was brought into the house through the back door.”
Birds and faith disappear
For most of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, the legend of the whipped pauper was widespread among people who encountered this bird. Outside of the world of folklore studies, references to bad omens can be found in the nature writings of Henry David Thoreau and Susan Fenimore Cooper, both of whom give credence to these superstitions. It wasn’t a thing. Well into the 20th century, local newspapers continued to share legends about this bird with their readers.
But as the extinction of species through fear suggests, widespread cultural familiarity with the will to flog is atrophying. One exception, the 2021 television series “Chapelwait,” based on Dr. are being discussed.
The cultural erasure of the will to whip reflects the actual decline of the species. Conservationists estimate that eastern whippoorwill populations have declined by about 70% since the 1970s. This decline is likely leading to what naturalist Robert Michael Pyle calls the “extinction of experience.” Pyle believes that when a species declines, people lose the opportunity to encounter it in their local landscape and are less likely to become familiar with it in the first place.
Such decline also causes social and cultural losses. This is most evident when a species becomes extinct. Consider the passenger pigeon. As author Jennifer Price shows in her book Flight Maps, American life was once closely intertwined with these species. When large flocks of passenger pigeons arrived, local residents gathered to hunt them, once an essential part of the American diet. Today, however, this species is remembered almost exclusively as a symbol of human extinction.
Similarly, the decline of common birds changes people’s relationship to the environment. In the UK, for example, the decline of house sparrows is robbing landscapes of the beloved sights and sounds of once ubiquitous birds. Meanwhile, the decline of cuckoos means that spring will arrive in Britain without its iconic song.
Beyond the culture of loss
I think we are witnessing a similar cultural shift with a will to whiplash. Their absence in adaptations of King’s works reflects their absence both in the landscape and in people’s lives. But while loss and grief understandably characterize many people’s relationships with the Whipping Will and other declining species, I would like to appeal for hope.
On the other hand, there are reasons to be hopeful about the potential for conservation. Whippoorwills appear to respond well to forest management practices that create a diverse forest with a mix of young and old trees. Many places where the whippoorwill breeds have active conservation plans in place to support this bird and other species that share its habitat.
Nor is the will to flogged culturally extinct.
After all, readers still come to the works of Lovecraft and King. These and other enduring references to the species provide people with the opportunity to find their way to the bird and what it means to all those who cared for it.
This article was first published conversation. please read original article.
