#alice kermode

Mystery: Upside-Down Faces and Face-Wearing
Updated: 8/07/16

SPOILERS THROUGH 2x11 


1. Episode 1x04 is about the Festival of the Upside Down Face in Charlesworth, WA. In 1957, a 17 year old girl named Sarah Benning, who was bullied by the other girls in her class, murdered the homecoming queen, Catherine Williams. She slit Williams’ throat, and the story is that she sliced off Williams’ face and stitched it back on, upside-down. 

Townspeople say that the spirit of Catherine Williams is the girl with the upside-down face, and to commemorate her, they wear their Halloween masks upside-down for the festival. However, Crystal DeNevers disputes this, saying that it’s actually Sarah Benning who haunts the town, and that she stitched Williams’ face on her own, upside-down. 

2. Later, Sheriff Boyd Osenga notes that both the graves of Sarah Benning and Catherine Williams were desecrated. Nothing remains of Sarah Benning. Catherine Williams’ body remains, but someone had removed her face.  (1x04)

3.Clara Simone, the psychic from the séance at Glushka, describes to Alex the first demon she ever saw as a child:

Simone: I tried to speak to him, I asked him his name. And he opened his mouth and all these flies flew out of him. It was like a dark cloud pouring out of him. And all the flies gathered on my ceiling, totally covering it. And then the boy whispered his name. Aleister. And as soon as I repeated it, these great, big black wings appeared out of his back, and the boy’s face peeled away and that’s how I saw the face of my first demon.

4. Professor Alice Kermode describes the cave paintings at Boulder Field in Bath, England, close to where Percival Black lived for a time. She says that her guess is that they were left by an Anglo-Saxon group, owing to their militaristic nature, though they might be too modern for that, possibly being as recent as the 16th century. She describes the characters being “placed in several rows and there is a tall figure at the head. Perhaps a general or commander.”

When Nic and Alex look at photos of the cave paintings, Alex notes she sees “what appeared to be hundreds of black shapes, barely more than stylized stick figures. They were arranged in rows.” Nic says the tall figure appears to be a “scary shadow leader.” It is approximately five times taller than all of the other figures, with its long arms raised above its head.

Further down the cave wall are photos of “black shapes in a circle around a tall central figure, whose arms were held wide like Jesus on the cross. And, again, the one in the center was much taller than the others.” When they zoom in on the tall figure, they see “its mouth was where the eyes should be, and its eyes were where the mouth should be.” It has an upside-down face. (1x11)

5. There are similar cave drawings at Urraca Mesa, NM. Alex says they contain “rows of dark figures, very militaristic, but they were surrounded by concentric circles, and outside those circles stood a giant figure. Tall. It didn’t have a face. None of the figures did. But this one had something interesting, it looked like a large crown that hung down off the head. It was hard to tell what it was supposed to be, but the connection to Kermode’s photographs sent a chill through me.” 

Alex visits Urraca Mesa with John Uvela for a guide, who says most people think the petroglyphs there portray a war that the Anasazi fought against evil spirits. Of the circles surrounding the apparent shadow “army,” Uvela says that they depict a gateway, and that Anasazi beat back the evil spirits to the gateway and then built totems to keep the gateway locked, two of which are still standing.

Alex then sees a petroglyph where there is a large symbol  etched into the wall. “It was a circle, about five feet in diameter. Inside the circle, a horizontal line and below that line, two dots side by side. Like a pair of eyes.” Another upside-down face. (1x12)

6. Alex describes the following scene at the exorcism of “John”:

Alex: It was hard to get a clear frame, due to the shaky camera. But there, on the wall opposite John’s feet, were symbols. Numbers. Circles. Pentagrams. And at the center, what appeared to be a face. A face with the eyes where the mouth should be, and the mouth where the eyes should be. This was not a church. This was something else entirely. (2x07)

7. In 2x05, the PNWS team receives a photo of Keith Dabic from Glushka. In 2x11, after learning of Dabic’s potential death, they re-examine the photo to find a seam at his hairline. His eyes have also changed. They surmise that someone else is wearing Keith’s face.