Lovecraft Country Season 1 Episode 3 ‘Holy Ghost’ Recap and Review

I shall nickname this episode the 13 Ghosts episode.

At the end of the last episode LOTS of stuff happened. Like a ton of stuff. Read the recaps to get caught up.

We are back with Leti in church where a spirited service provides the visual to a voice over asking Leti to go ahead and fly. She seems way less into the church service than everyone else.

After the title card we get a crawl that tells us that “In the Summer of 1955, a group of Negro men and women moved into a house on the North Side of Chicago. Ten days later three people went missing inside the house, never to be seen again. Pioneering is dangerous….

Day 1

Leti discusses buying a house with Ruby. It is a ramshackle house to say the least. It has 13 rooms. Leti is going to make it a boarding house that acts as safe haven for other Black folks. Leti and Ruby share a touching moment as sisters as Leti convinces Ruby to help her get things started. She opens up a small door to show Ruby the elevator and is almost decapitated by the elevator that screams down from the second level.

Hippolyta is finishing getting ready when she takes out a dog eared copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. She begins to rip out pages of the book. Atticus is helping prepare breakfast with his little sister. Atticus’s mother comes down and they discuss the deadline for the new Green Book. Atticus finished this version to try and be helpful. Mom is clearly going through some stuff.

Atticus heads over to his fathers apartment where he finds him passed out on the floor. They discuss a story about a mysterious white stranger with a baseball bat who saved both George and Montrose during riots. After saying to them “I got you kid”. Atticus asks to stay with his father for a few nights. We also see a pretty impressive collection of records at the apartment. Montrose is in to music for sure. We learn that the two of them have told Hippolyta that George was shot by a racist sheriff. Montrose doesn’t believe anything else can be done. That they should all just move on. Atticus angrily disagrees and the two part ways.

Day 2

It is move in day. Leti is taking pictures of everything as movers try to move a piano up the stairs. Leti has already started to fill some of the rooms with interesting characters. Atticus shows up and asks why she moved to the north side. They haven’t seen each other since the funeral. He is going to move back to Florida. He plays unsettled really well. Leti offers to let him stay in the house. A car horn interrupts their moment as a group of white men are blowing their car horns out in front of their house. They clearly do not like that a Black woman has bought the house.

Day 5

Leti’s neighbors are planting “Whites Only” signs in their yards. Leti is sleeping but a terrifying ghost keeps pulling off her covers. The car horns are still going outside. Something is up with the boiler so she goes down stairs to take a look. It is definitely running hot. She uses a wrench to let off the pressure. While in the dark basement she hears a noise and goes to investigate. There is a lot of creepy shit in the basement. She see’s the door to the subbasement rattle up and down and she runs up to get Atticus. They explore the subbasement. It is completely empty. It is really just a big room. It’s Atticus’s turn to think that Leti has a little PTSD. He mentions that the racist neighbors are using the same tactics as the Koreans. They share a brief moment before he mentions that the subbasement would be perfect for a dark room.

Day 8

Leti is throwing a house warming party. The white neighbors are not thrilled. I want to go to one of Leti’s parties for sure. Ruby is tearing it up as the singer. Hippolyta brought over a ton of food and Leti and her talk about Atticus. They are both worried about Atticus. Hippolyta clearly misses George. The kids have found a Ouija board and are trying to conjure spirits in the basement. Uhhmmmm bad idea y’all. The Ouija board has clearly made contact and they ask who they have made contact with. The board spells out George. Hippolyta is looking for the kids when she walks by a room that has a really detailed model of the planets.

Ruby continues to provide the entertainment hitting us with “is you is or is you ain’t my baby”. Atticus shows up and is PISSED that Leti is dancing sexy with another guy. Leti doesn’t pull any punches. After the song she runs to the bathroom to cool off. We see another gory ghost in the bathtub. Atticus comes in and OH MAN they do it. So I guess that elephant is out of the room. She is on her period and has bled and she apologizes to him. He tells her its okay and they part awkwardly.

Back at the party Ruby is discussing trying to get hired at Marshall Fields. The entire crowd stops as they react to a cross burning on the front lawn. Leti grabs a baseball bat and the men stand watch with shotguns as she destroys the cars that have been honking incessantly. Hippolyta pulls up with a car where the men drop off their guns in the trunk. As she pulls away the cops arrive and arrest all of them.

In the back of the paddy wagon Leti is being worked over by the cop who is driving and the cop who is keeping watch. As the wagon swerves to maximize injury the cop tells her that the Winthrop House is bad for Black people because they found nine dead Black people in the basement.

When Leti returns she finds all of the photos in her darkroom add up to a bigger picture. It is the former owner who rises out of the picture and tells her to GET OUT. She runs upstairs and looks at a couple of pictures. Ruby tells her that all of the tenants have moved out. Leti tells her not to worry about the money as she has some of her mothers money left over. Ruby is pissed that Leti has kept the inheritance. Their mother seemed like a piece of work. Ruby ends with “I thought you were a fuck up, but really you are just fucked up”.

Hippolyta and Montrose are discussing George’s body. She knows there is a lot more to the story. The fact she knows whats up is causing strain between Atticus and her. She doesn’t know what happened but she knows something is up.

Day 10

Leti is in full on zodiac killer mode as she takes notes, has pictures and newspapers clipping and is trying to figure out the last known owner. We learn a little more about the history of the house. One of the former owners (named Epstein) was fired by the University of Chicago for unethical practices. Heirem Epstein and the sheriff know each other and her theory is that the sheriff was supplying Epstein with test subjects. She found the pictures of the people missing. She is convinced that the people are trapped in the house. Atticus tells her to move out. She then tells Atticus that she was virgin and that night at the party was her first time. He feels bad. She tells him they need to talk about all of the crazy shit that happened in Ardham. She tells him she is terrified but she will not be scared out of her own home.

She brings in a priestess who sacrifices a goat on her front porch. The priestess then puts some of the goat’s blood on their head as she tries to cleanse the house. Now in the infamous subbasement the three of them join hands and make a circle. She is trying to rid the house of the spirits. Above them racist neighbors break into the house. As the ritual increases in intensity so does the rampage of the racist neighbors. They are there to kill the residents of the house. Strange things are afoot in the house though as the racist neighbors hear noises. Its full on poltergeist down in the basement. Some really cool creature designs as a man with a baby head attack one of the racist neighbors. The other gets his head loped off. As the ritual ends the sprinklers in the basement go off and wipe the blood from their foreheads. Our priestess is now possessed and is actively trying to kill Atticus Her name is Lucy by the way. Suddenly Lucy falls to the ground and now it seems Atticus is possessed by the old racist homeowner. In what can only be called the coolest FUCKING throw back to 13 Ghosts Leti evokes the help of the dead Black victims to take revenge on the racist Epstein. They materialize and form a circle around the Epstein ghost. The finish the ritual and with their help they cast him out. It is an emotional and intense scene and it completely works for me.

Sometime in the future we see Leti showing a reporter around the home and the reporter discusses how important the house as a sanctuary for Black people has become. They take the elevator down and the reporter asks Leti if she knows where the missing white racist neighbors are. Leti does not. They get off the elevator. The camera stays with the elevator and as it descends and we see a ton of Runes and eventually the dead body of the racist neighbors. We will also see a long tunnel that runs underneath the house.

Atticus walks into an office and see’s Lady Braithwhite. We learn that a Braithwhite and Epstein were friends and Atticus pulls a gun and tells her to stay away. She stops him and tells him that spells are difficult and that Samuel Braithwhite created a spell that made him invulnerable. He had to remove the spell before the ceremony. Horatio Winthrop a Son of Adam stole pages of the Book of Names and hid them in Leti’s house. She tells Atticus when he is ready she will tell him more about their shared ancestors. The episode ends.

Greater Connection Questions.

1. This episode nibbles around the edge of Red Lining which is a particularly shitty practice that still impacts Black home ownership to this day. Especially in cities like Kansas City,
2. There is no way to read Leti’s brutal scene with the paddy wagon without evoking the name of Freddie Gray and the practice of ‘rough rides’. We have waited along time for police reform.
3. I feel quite confident that the exorcism scene is intentionally reminiscent of 13 Ghosts. I want more of their individual stories. My guess is each of them represent some sort of Archetype within the greater story or could be representative of different forms of racism.
4. There is a new Blu out from Scream Factory of 13 Ghosts. It is read and you should check it out.