In any long-running creative project–a TV or book series, or a movie franchise–continuity will eventually become a problem. Some original works, in their rush to a sequel, introduce continuity issues early on, that will shape the further entries and cause bigger problems down the line. This certainly happens in the big-name horror franchises, and reaches delightful levels of ridiculousness in the Friday the 13th series.
One of the reasons I’ve always loved Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, apart from its hilariously ’80s view of New York (complete with gangs, giant boomboxes, and random barrels of toxic waste), is its giddy embrace of the contradiction at the heart of Jason Voorhees, who appears in this movie both as a frightened child who drowned at summer camp, and a hulking, fully grown killing machine apparently seeking revenge for his own death, and the death of the mother who was avenging his death in the first place. Freddy Vs. Jason will also take on this conundrum, and it’s another movie I like a whole lot.
There are other oddities about Jason’s nature, like how, in the earlier films, he can be killed but he never stays dead. Later entries really embrace his unkillable nature, so he’s often referred to as “Zombie Jason.” This is taken to bizarre lengths in Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X. But the central problem is: how did Jason die as a child and still exist as a giant grown-up? Neither Jason Takes Manhattan nor Freddy Vs. Jason, or other of the movies that refer to him drowning at summer camp, explains how this is possible.
One day I was reading an interesting book called Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age, by Hungarian scholar Éva Pócs, and I became irrationally excited, bubbling over to discuss the central ideas of her work. Discussing popular ideas about witchcraft in Europe, she describes a commonly-held belief in a supernatural realm, with communication possible between that world and the mundane world, via various means.
While the details “vary from place to place and from people to people” (34), she says that “the image of a soul that departs from its body is familiar in all European cultures, as is the belief in alter egos, or doubles, that appear during altered states of consciousness.” (31) This soul image is alternately known as a mara, mahr, or mora. Similar beings have different names in different cultures, and the image, related to the “nightmare,” which shares a root word, has commonalities with werewolf legends, possession, and various forms of witchcraft.
The belief in this soul image gives an explanation for why people think they see doppelgangers, ghosts, or people who couldn’t be in certain place, an overriding idea that can explain a variety of strange experiences, all tied in some way to the idea of a soul or spirit, that can act differently at different times, in different circumstances. Because of the spiritual dimension at work, these spirits aren't subject to the normal limiting effects of physical matter.
“In essence these are humans that have a double … that can detach from, leave, or during a trance be sent by its owner, and after death live on as a dead soul. It can have physical and spiritual (soul) variants … Both types of alter ego have the ability of metamorphose …” (31). So these doubles can go forth from people whether they’re alive or dead, and can take numerous forms: "they would appear either in their own image or in someone else’s” (38), not bound by gender, and including “sometimes in the image of his wife, and at others of his child" (41).
This all hit me like the bolt of lightning that strikes a metal post and brings a hulking killer back from the dead. “What does this sound like?” I cried. Everything snapped into place, and since then I’ve been convinced that this piece of European folklore explains this entire mixed-up element of Jason’s existence in the Friday the 13th mythos.
In Pócs’ research, doppelgangers or spirit doubles can be tangible or intangible, created accidentally or on purpose, in one’s own form or the form of a different specific person, generated while the person is alive or dead. The world of the spirits is fluid. As they pass between the realms, they aren’t fixed, but changeable, and the mora is an all-purpose uncanny being, which could serve many functions and explain different strange scenarios, all explained by the spirits’ having varied abilities and avenues in which to manifest.
It can morph in many different ways; for example, it can appear as a wolf, which explains werewolf stories, but it can shift into other forms as well. The common basis lies in the ability of the soul to leave the body and take on a physical form, which can then commit actions.
Given this, Jason’s spirit could manifest physically after death the way he was in life, as a young boy, but his rage and grief could also manifest as an alternative self, grown and powerful. Maybe more persuasively, his existence could also be explained as the vengeful spirit of Mrs. Voorhees, taking on the projected image of her son in a threatening adult form. This figure doesn’t appear until after her death, but she already behaved as if she was manifesting his spirit when she was alive, with her chanting of “kill her, Mommy!” in his voice, so she was halfway there.
Also, “if somebody walks about in something other than their own image, then they are a ‘vacant’ or ‘empty’ body,” Pócs says (40), and the adult Jason certainly appears mindless and soulless. This “vacant” or “empty” body is also sometimes described as “a puppet or mask character” (40), and it was apparently not uncommon to encounter “the picturing of the dead in masks” (42). Masks!
This idea also explains how Jason can be so impossible to kill, since “the alter ego is imagined to be a physical reality,” (38) appearing that way, and may be able to act on the physical plane, but it's a supernatural projection, not a living, breathing person.
So maybe Mrs. Voorhees was in some contact with Jason’s spirit. Or maybe her spirit came back after death in the imagined form of a grown son. Or her dead son’s spirit was reactivated in a blind desire for revenge. Anything’s possible and nothing’s contradictory.
I am absolutely not arguing that anyone involved with the making of the Friday the 13th films was directly inspired by this folklore, or had even heard of it. There’s no evidence of any direct connection. However, these were once commonly held ideas, found in different countries and cultures. Folk tales seep into the world, so similar ideas might just be floating around now, unprovable and unattached to any specific belief system.
People believed these things because they made a kind of sense to them, and they obviously still do. Some critics aside, the average viewer of the Friday the 13th series is honestly no more bothered by the illogic of Jason’s return, the mechanics of his survival, or the continuity between different manifestations of himself, than people were when they accepted outright that human spirits could travel from their bodies in various forms.
The Friday the 13th series has always been akin to tales told around the campfire, made explicit in various of the films, where Jason’s story is told around a literal campfire. Oral ghost stories shared among young people are not that far removed from the cultures in which the mora legends circulated. A campfire tale isn’t something that can be fact-checked, or that anyone would want to. Unlike a written or filmed text, it’s not possible to pin down the details: you can’t go back and re-read, or rewind. So no one goes over them in the kind of excruciating detail we see on modern YouTube channels. The stories can be looser, the fine details lost in the larger flood of atmosphere.
“Basically, a spirit came back” is a good enough explanation. The object isn’t to create a perfectly honed logical argument for the existence of something; it’s to show something scary and, preferably, memorable. As long as an atmosphere is created, as long as the story scares someone, it can “make sense” enough to be worthwhile. Especially since much of its real job is to make sense of the mysterious aspects of life and death.
Pócs, Eva. Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age. Central European University Press, 2000.
Another book on the subject, loaded with information about doppelgangers and shapeshifters related to the mora concept is:
Lecouteux, Claude. Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages. 1st U.S. ed. Inner Traditions, 2003.
